Kidney Pie
by Obscure Bird
Summary: Todd and Lovett's plans for revenge and romance get a bit more complicated as Jack the Ripper takes a stab at the ladies of Fleet Street. Because after all, the best way to a woman's heart is to shove the entrails out of the way and reach up under the rib cage...
1. Chapter 1

**Kidney Pie**

_Yes, Jack the Ripper ate people. Pieces of them, anyway. And so this story was just begging to be written. Hope you all enjoy it._

_Sweeney Todd belongs to Sondheim, unless Tim Burton can fight him for it. Jack the Ripper belongs to himself._

-Does her business, but…-

Mist hung thick in the air, transforming the contents of the alley into ghostly shapes, but the moon shone bright enough to let Mrs. Mooney see. Its light struck sparks in the cats' eyes, making them shine like twinned jewels through the rolling white.

There was something about that night that made her hair stand on end. Perhaps, she thought, she had been living on cats too long was beginning to feel their instincts. Or maybe it was the rumors from Whitechapel, although she wasn't the kind of woman to let such things get the best of her. She smiled. Murder was always good for business. Customers would devour their pies as the listened hungrily to the latest details.

She crept towards a pair of brilliant blue eyes floating above an old garbage can. Drawing closer, she could see the cat was a handsome tabby, with the big, muscular build of an expert mouser. _Perfect._ She leapt at him, snatching the yowling tom by the scruff with a practiced ease. _And perfect again. _

The baker froze as a head suddenly thrust itself into view in the alley's opening. The face was shadowed, hidden by a battered top hat and a mane of dark hair, but there was something unmistakably predatory in its tilted set. Mrs. Mooney crouched into the darkness behind the cans, but the cat continued to growl and struggle.

The sound drew the intruder on, the hunting head joined to a rather sinister figure as the man crept out from behind the wall and stalked slowly into the opening. Leaning slightly with his arms held just away from his sides, he looked ready to pounce as he peered through the fog for the source of the noise.

Very slowly, Mrs. Mooney reached for the cat with her free hand, wrapped her fingers around its neck, and squeezed, crushing the growl into a pathetic squeak. The stranger cocked his head, listening to the strangled squealing.

The baker didn't take her eyes off the man as he took a slight step forward. Holding perfectly still, she tightened her grip, cutting off the last of her victim's voice and letting it struggle in silence. The figure looked blindly towards her, waiting, until he finally gave a faint grunt of dismissal and drifted back into the dark street.

Mrs. Mooney breathed a sigh of relief before she swung the twisting tabby against the wall and broke its neck.

-What did your Lucy look like?-

Sweeney opened his favorite razor as the old pain welled up again. Running an old, soft rag over the already spotless silver, he forced himself to focus on its sleek, polished sides, the feel of its engraved handle beneath his fingers, its perfect edge, until his memories retreated again into the shadows of his mind.

It was beautiful, the sole precious thing left in his life, the last cold glimmer of Benjamin Barker's happiness. And it was lethal, a deliverer of swift, clean, efficient death.

Simple death. He wondered idly, turning the blade slowly in the moonlight that fell through his window, how it felt to butcher and mangle a body like they say this 'fiend of Whitechapel' did. Perhaps he would ask Mrs. Lovett.

He cursed inwardly. _Mrs. Lovett! _He had been so lost in the light on his razor that he had forgotten she was still sitting in his chair. And still talking.

"Mr. Smith – You remember him, don't you Mr. T? His shop's on the other side of St. Dunstan's – he says it's got to be a Jew, but Mrs. Allen was telling Mrs. Howard it was a doctor." She was lounging in his chair, looking so infuriatingly as if she belonged there, his dark angel, as she discussed the same rumors in her own unflappable way. In her own hungrily, dangerously gorgeous way. He scowled. "Mrs. Oakley, from Fore Street, she swears he's some kind of 'angel of death' sent to purge the streets of London, which makes you wonder about that Reverend Lupin fellow she's always on about…"

He frowned, feeling a twinge of something like jealousy. Wasn't one demon enough for her? He turned back to his razor. He wouldn't bring it up, then. But maybe he'd try it out, just for a lark. When the judge came. He smiled darkly at the grinning blade.

_"FIEND! HELP!" _The distant shrieks caught his attention, and, surprisingly, made even the ever practical Mrs. Lovett jump. "_MISCHIEF!"_ He knew the voice. It was the old beggar woman who raved at their customers. "_MISCHIEF! MISCH-"_ The desperate cries cut off suddenly. A strange curiosity came over the barber, driving him towards the door of his shop.

"Where are you going?" Behind him, Mrs. Lovett half turned, looking back at him over the chair's padded headrest. He could hear the panic in her voice. _Good._ He kept walking. "You can't go out there!" He was opening the door as he heard the _clunk_ of her new boots chasing him across the worn floorboards. He was already outside when he felt her hand snatching at his sleeve. He smiled as he pulled against her hopeless tugging and dragged her after him into the cold, foggy street. "_Mr. Todd!"_

How afraid she was just because he was going out to find that miserable old tramp of a beggar! He almost laughed. That would teach her to sit in his wonderful chair, and belong there, and be beautiful.

"Come on now, Mr. T, let's go back and I'll get you a nice tot of gin and-" Her voice was frantic as she pulled harder on his arm. "-And you can tell me all the lovely things you'll to the judge." _She _must_ be desperate._ He kept walking. "Now- See – Mr. Todd-!"

"What!?" He turned sharply to face his accomplice, placing one foot down with an unhealthy squelching noise as he did so. The noise was revolting, even for the worst of London's streets. He looked down. "Oh."

The beggar woman was strewn across the filthy cobblestones, her flesh ruined and herself all pulled out of herself. His eyes traced the jagged tear across her starved stomach and gave a disapproving grunt. He hadn't even bothered to sharpen his knife. _So much for Jack the Ripper._

"Let's go now, Mr. T, you don't want to see any more of this, now do you? We'll get right back before somebody sees us." Sweeney half grinned, half grimaced as he leaned closer to the corpse. _Bloody woman._ He'd take as long as he wanted to, and see how she liked her Saucy Jackie while she admired his handiwork. What was her hurry, anyway?

The beggar's hat had been lost in the struggle, and her filthy locks lay spread in the muck of the road. Her filthy _blonde_ locks. His eyes moved to the body's face, only to find that it had none. Its skin was peeled away, its eyes wide, staring out of fleshy, exposed sockets.

"Huh." He turned away, starting back towards the shop, the baker letting out a relieved breath as she followed. "Never noticed she had yellow hair."

-Did you come in for a pie, sir?-

_Curse her, why did she have to squeal so?_ Jack crouched back into the shadows as the two figured retreated from his latest job. If they'd have given him a few more minutes he could've gotten _really_ creative with her. He scowled. _Should've known better than to try my tricks on a loony. Always bloody screamers._

Creeping from his hiding place, he stepped back into the road and looked down Fleet Street after the couple who had interrupted him but could see nothing. It was the night's deepening cold, he knew, thickening the fog. He pushed through it as through a curtain, but they were gone. He spat out a silent swear. They'd have those cusses of coppers down on him to spoil the game. But they'd see. He wouldn't go far.

Edging towards the nearest building, he found a darkened shop. The doorknob twisted in his hand and he smiled as he slowly opened the door. The little bells on the other side gave only a faint jingle in the dark as he slid inside. With a soft chuckle, he reached for the knife in his coat pocket. Maybe he could make tonight a double event.

"Who's that, then?" The killer jumped, throwing his shoulders against the glass panes of the door as she spun around. A gas light flickered on and, behind a cluttered counter, he saw a ghastly 

couple, lean and pale as hungry ghosts with wild hair and hollow eyes. _The same pair?_ "What do you think you're doing sneaking in at this hour!?"

Jack blinked, dumbstruck. "Um… Aren't you open?"

"Who on earth do you think would come for pies after midnight?" The baker's black dress was low cut, her wayward red curls nodding as she tucked her chin questioningly towards the white skin of her chest. Could she possibly imagine how very enticing she was? _Whore._

The man beside her had drifted wordlessly away, standing by the garishly papered wall as he polished the blade of a silver razor. Perhaps now wasn't the time to make a move. "Oh. Well, I was out and was getting hungry…" He could feel the weight of a little butcher's paper package in his breast pocket, something he'd taken from the old beggar. He _was_ hungry, but not for pie. "But I'll come back another time if you're closed." He reached behind him for the doorknob.

"Oh, no, dearie. You don't want go out there again." A note of concern crept into her voice as she leaned slightly over the counter, giving him an even better view. _If I had her alone in a dark street…_ "Here. Since I'm up, I'll get you a nice pie. Sit down, I'll be right back."

She turned and left, leaving Jack to follow her with his eyes as he sat in an empty booth and took off his worn top hat. The odd man was now leaning in a shadowed corner, his eyes only on that razor. Quickly, the Ripper estimated his chances of disposing of his silent companion before the woman returned. Then, perhaps, his visit would be worth his while when he traced that glorious cleavage with the point of his knife. His eyes caught the gleam of silver as the stranger held his razor up, examining it in the dim light. Maybe the odds weren't so good.

Hearing the rustling of skirts that signaled his darling little whore's return, he sat up straighter to watch as the emerged from the bakehouse stairway, carrying a tray with three pies. He almost cringed. He _hated_ meat pies. But he knew he could hardly say so now. "Here you are, love. They're a bit cold, but that's what happens when you sneak around in the dead of night like that." He eyed the offered pastries suspiciously as she set them down in front of him. They were probably made from stray dogs or something. All these little pie shops did things like that. He picked one up gingerly, closing his eyes. Perhaps if he pretended it was her sweet, filthy flesh he was biting into, roasted, maybe, with a lovely gravy…

Suddenly, he wasn't sure he was imagining it. He opened his eyes in shock, greedily taking another bite. There was no mistaking that taste. The pie quickly vanished. "It's -" He caught himself, flashing the baker a genuine smile as he stood and leaned in close to her ear. "It's delectable, my dear. But might I say…" He wasn't sure whether he felt like laughing or kissing her as he suddenly envisioned much greater potential for the meaty bundle in his coat. "…that I have always preferred steak and kidney pie. Or just kidney."

"Kidney pie?" She knew. He could see it in her face. Jack nearly did laugh as he rook the little parcel from his pocket and slipped it into her slender hand.

"Oh, yes. It's very nice." Straightening up, the Ripper deftly tipped his hat back over his shock of dark hair, winking. "Say you'll bake me one?"

"Yes, of course I will…" She backed a step away as she spoke.

"You'd say anything but your prayers, wouldn't you, sweet?" He let out a hearty chuckle as he reached for the remaining pies. "Do you mind?" She shook her head and the stuffed them both into his pockets. He was still laughing as he slid out of the booth and out the door.

Dark-coated constables were already dashing past him as he started out into the night, shouting and hurrying in their useless way. He smiled, glancing up at the sign on the shop. "Mrs. Lovett's." He would definitely have to visit Fleet Street again.

-The End For Now-

_Thanks for reading, and I hope you got a chuckle or two out of it. Reviews are very much appreciated._


	2. Chapter 2

**Kidney Pie- Part II**

_I figured this'd make just a funny one-shot, but I'm going to keep it up a while, since it sounds like me and you folks both had a little too much fun with it. Ha ha ha! It's not as good as the first part, I have to say, but I hope you enjoy it anyway._

-"Dear Boss"-

"Excuse me!" Jack cursed as an oily voice called out behind him. _Devil take it!_ He turned, putting on as innocent an air as he could muster. "Didn't you hear, this is a crime scene! I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

"A crime scene?" _You don't say? Dolt!_ The speaker was a short and rather portly specimen, with greasy blonde hair hanging from under a fine velvet hat. He looked as though he was too fond of rich foods and the company of the sort of ladies Jack had his fun with. "I do hope it's nothing serious."

"Oh, yes, I'm afraid." The fat man leaned in conspiratorially. "There's been another murder." A grin split his bloated cheeks. It seemed he enjoyed playing the man in the know as well.

"In Fleet Street!?" Feigning the good citizen's horror, the Ripper shook his head, wide-eyed. "The city's not safe, sir." He eyed the dandy with a sly smile. "But I'm sure the ladies of the locality will appreciate the police interest in the case…"

"Well…" The man shrugged with practiced modesty. "I try to do my best for my friends and neighbors."

"Quite." Jack let his smile go cold. "And who shall I say, sir, when the subject comes up, is the brave gentleman ensuring their safety?"

"William Bamford." He tipped his hat slightly, a stylish retractable came dangling from his wrist. "Beadle to the honorable Judge Turpin."

"Ah." _Send a beadle as investigator? No wonder they haven't caught me yet._ "I'm sure they'll have every confidence." Nodding, he turned and walked away. _Beadle Bamford. _The Ripper smiled, turning up the collar of his worn coat to hide his grin. _Try not to disappoint the darlings when you get my letter._

-"God, that's good!"-

Mrs. Lovett had never checked on a batch of pies so often in her entire baking career. She was determined that they should be perfect, worried every instant that they would burn. What if the kidneys didn't cook right? Or if she hadn't seasoned them properly? It had been more than seventeen years since she had tried to cook a steak and kidney pie, before her dear Albert died, and the long years of baking the worst pies in London haunted her memories. What would he do if he didn't like them?

Then again, what would he do if he did?

This was a situation Nellie did _not _want to be in. Sweeney Todd- angry, brooding, manageable Sweeney – was one thing. Jack the Ripper was quite another. He tore whores apart for fun, taunted the police. He was wild, violent, dangerous…

And he liked her cooking.

She shook the thought out of her head as she dashed back to the oven to check the all-important pies. Four of them sat on a clean tray, the crust golden and glazed with a somewhat modified gravy bubbling in the slits in their lovely tops. They looked perfect as she finally pulled them out of the heat.

She had been afraid the one kidney he'd given her from Lucy – how grateful she was to have that one worry taken care of – wouldn't be enough for a pie, so she pulled some from Sweeney's victims. He wouldn't be able to taste the difference, would he?

She felt a little twist of guilt as she thought of the barber upstairs. Their only intimacy was the cold kind between partners in crime, and it suddenly seems shameful, a violation of that precious bond, to cook another man's kills. But it was only this one time. Or wasn't it?

_Jack the Ripper…_ What would he do once he had his pies? Would he take them and go, or would he want to try another job like Lucy's? Mrs. Lovett shuddered. Maybe she could ask Sweeney to stay with her when…

No. The less Mr. Todd knew, the better. But she _had_ to at least know that they tasted good.

"Toby!"

-"There was another man who saw…"-

They said Jack the Ripper cut his little whores' throats so deep that there was nothing left intact but the bone. So Sweeney cut deeper. Standing behind the man in the chair, he snatched the fellow's neatly combed hair and tore his head back, burying his razor's thirsty blade up to the shaft as he dragged it from ear to ear. Blood shot then gushed as the heart slowed quickly to a stop, but his screaming blade, as angry as its master, wanted more. He twisted his fingers tighter in the corpse's hair, and, bracing his razor hand against its shoulder, tugged and snapped until the spine broke and the head came, twisting, free. _Take that, Jack!_

He stomped on the lever and let the broken remains slide down to the bakehouse, hurling the head down after it. It bounced and rolled across the brick below, leaping towards where Mrs. Lovett must be working, and he waited to hear her to speak, to gasp or cry out, to do anything to let him know she'd seen what he had done. Nothing. Snarling, he released the lever.

_Witch._ Did she think he wouldn't see here whispering to the stranger, that he couldn't guess who that stranger was? He scowled as he attacked the scarlet pools with a mop. What did he care what he murmured in her blasted, beautiful ear…

_Damn her!_

How many had this bloody Jack fellow killed, five? And all his victims were cheap tramps and whoring beggars. He might as well have been a charity worker, putting that lot out of their misery. And he wasn't anything but a filthy glory hound, with his letters to the police and his fancy mutilations.

If sluts were his thing, he could go ahead and _have_ Mrs. Lovett, and take her and her low-cut bodices and her gorgeous chest, her constant chatter and relentless care, somewhere out of his sight. Sweeney wouldn't mind. Bloody water sloshed out as he proved his point by thrusting the mop too hard into the bucket.

No, he wouldn't mind at all.

Cleaning his razor, he stepped again on the lever of the empty chair, listening through the trapdoor for any sound of Nellie noticing the head. He bit his lip as he let it swing close in silence.

_Whore._


	3. Chapter 3

**Kidney Pie – Part III**

-"Yours Truly…" –

_**Mr. Lusk, **_

_**I am waiting to hear the next joke you give out to the newspapers.**_

Jack paused, the pen held still so long over the page that the red ink on its tip began to dry. Absently, he dipped it again in the bottle.

_**They say now that I'm…**_

What _were_ they saying now? _They say I am…_ The thickening scarlet ink started to run on the page where the pen's bleeding point touched it. _I am… _He couldn't think of the next word._ I am hungry._

He glanced almost guiltily over his shoulder to where the last remaining meat pie sat on the table by his bed. The other he had taken was far too tempting to have lasted until noon. It was now nearly seven o' clock. _And I want that pie!_ But as the same time, he didn't want to run out of pies. He shook his head, snarling, his mussed dark-brown hair flapping around his ears, and crossed out everything he had written.

_**Mr. Lusk,**_

_** No luck yet, old boss. I laughed when I heard they…**_

_When does the pie shop close?_ Maybe he could eat his pie now and go for the special ones before too long… _Curse it!_ All he could think of was that bloody pastry, the gorgeous gravy, the crust done to perfection, the taste of flesh…

_**Mr. Lusk…**_

…the white, exposed flesh of its baker, her rare appreciation for murder and cannibalism, her lovely brown eyes fixed on him as…

"Augh!" He tore the thought away, crumpling up his unfinished letter and hurling it into the corner.

_**Mr. Lusk…**_

He began on a new piece of paper, but froze again. Maybe he _would_ leave soon. Around nine should be late enough. There wasn't any need to wait until the dead hours just to drop in for a pie. Although on the other hand, he certainly wouldn't mind paying a midnight call of another kind on the charming Mrs. Lovett.

Grinning wickedly, he crossed the little room and retrieved the baked temptation, not even waiting to return to his seat before he took the first bite. When he did sit, smiling around another delicious mouthful, he looked again at the heading. With a violent slash of is pen, he crossed out Lusk's name and wrote –

_**My dear Mrs. Lovett…**_

-"Demons are Prowling Everywhere Nowadays"-

"Now, Toby, I want you to go straight to bed, love. Understand?" The boy nodded reluctantly as he finished sweeping the empty shop. Mrs. Lovett glanced nervously at the door. "And since you've been such a good lad, you can have all the gin you like."

His eyes brightened immediately. "Thank you, ma'am!" He was gone, leaving the old dishrag hanging off the counter wagging in his wake. In half an hour at the most, he'd be sound asleep. Jack wouldn't come before then, would he? Or what if Sweeney came downstairs? That was hardly likely. He hadn't even let her in when she brought him his supper. She'd had to leave the tray on the doorstep. But she couldn't hear him pacing, which made her worry.

From the little warming oven behind the counter, she pulled the three remaining kidney pies. The fourth she'd given Toby to try. At least, after his excited praise, she didn't need to worry about the pies themselves.

That didn't mean she wasn't worried about everything else. Should she leave the door open and the lights on, or would he rather have the neighbors think the shop was closed? Would he bring her more tidbits to cook, or did he intend to see that she wouldn't live to roll another crust? Worst of all, what should she wear? Perhaps, with Jack the Ripper, a more conservative top would be advisable.

Down the hall past her dark parlor, her worries followed her, and caught her as she reached her bedroom door. Out of the heavy silence of the deserted shop, she heard the faint jingle of the bells above the door. _It's him._

_No, no, not yet… _She turned, looking down the shadowy corridor towards the dim light spilling from the kitchen. "Mr. Todd?" Nothing. _He just brought down the tray, is all. _She could help but feel a cold tingling at the back of her neck even as she told herself it was only the barber. _He just doesn't want to speak to me, still._ The bells sang again.

Slowly, Nellie made her careful way back towards the kitchen and peered in. "Mr. Todd…?" It was empty, deathly silent, but on warm tray, in the place of one of the special pies sat a neatly folded piece of paper. Her pulse roared through the quiet as she stepped to the counter and opened it, revealing lines of red scrawling cursive.

_**My dear Mrs. Lovett,**_

_**You can't imagine, love, how you have ruined my efforts today. You, and your wonderful pies, and the image of your sweet, beautiful, filthy face have infected me. Don't imagine I won't punish you. I could spend the rest of my life killing you and be well satisfied. Don't forget my pies, my sweet. Till tonight, I am longing to see you, and **__**I WILL HAVE YOU!**_

_** I think I may be in love, but might kill you anyway.**_

_** Yours Truly,**_

___**Jack the Ripper.**_

Mrs. Lovett stared at the page, stunned, as it started to rattle in her trembling fingers. But if he wanted to kill her, where the hell was he? Was he coming back?

"Evening, love." Leaning close behind her shoulder, as if to read his own letter, her devilish admirer took another bite of his half-eaten pie.

-"You See, Sir, a Man Infatuate with Love"-

Jack felt a part of him spinning as his baking beauty leapt away, turning, to back frantically towards safety. The fear in her eyes was enthralling, something he'd never see in the street women he usually had his fun with. They'd lift their skirts for a penny and a word, couldn't afford any more thought than was required to find the most convenient wall to lean on. He smiled dizzily as he set the pie on the counter and stepped towards her.

"You stay away from me, you hear?" Mrs. Lovett retreated slowly, her voice and sweet, slender body trembling, his crumpled letter clasped to her pale, heaving breast. Grinning, he made for her, but she dodged around the end of the counter. "I said stay away!" She was obviously, and so endearingly, afraid of him, but she snatched up a heavy cleaver and waved it at him as the Ripper followed her around, cornering her.

The scratched blade wavered as she held it up. Rather than menacing, he found it oddly alluring. She _had_ to be the perfect woman for him. _Jack, old boy, I think you're smitten!_

But now what? At this point, his girl was typically holding back her petticoats with her legs spread. And at this point, he would typically bash her head against the wall she was leaning on and strangle the bitch before he took his knife out. That no longer seemed the best option. But, _curse it, _that's what he wanted! _Isn't it?_

He drew his own knife, his favorite, from beneath his coat and pinned her knife hand with his wrist. With his empty right hand wrapping around her pale throat, he tilted the blade in his left so she could see it. "You do exactly as I tell you, sweetheart, and I'll treat you nice, yeah?"

"No, please!" He wasn't squeezing, but he could feel her pulse writhing under his fingers. The tear that escaped her eye as he forced her back against the countertop was almost dried by his own breath. "T-take it easy, love…"

_And this is where I…_don't_ cut her throat?_ Puzzled, he leaned back slightly, giving her a little more room to breathe as he considered the situation. There were the pies at stake. She couldn't die, then. And besides, she was beautiful.

"Um." Jack glanced awkwardly around the little pie shop before he could decide what to do. "T-… Tell me your first name."

Her brown eyes fixed on him, startled. "What?"

"Tell me! I'll cut your throat!" Crushing her again, he released her arm as he forced her chin back and settled the edge of his knife against her soft white skin.

"El- Eleanor."

He had never known any of his ladies names before. That was a start. "May I…" He blinked, glanced away from her, then scowled again. "Say you'll let me… call on you… sometime."

The fear on her features faded somewhat. "You ain't serious!"

"Say it!" He pressed her hard against the wall. "I mean to court you or cut you, Mrs. Lovett, one way or another!"

He tilted the knife, only slightly; a drop of blood welled up gently from the white skin at its point. Only one slash would do it, easy as ever. But, as far as he could remember, he had never intended to do quite what he had in mind now. His eyes left her throat, lifted to her chapped lips, found her eyes.

Behind those eyes, he almost saw her calculating, guessing, deciding. He felt her shrug against him.

He almost dropped his knife in shock as she kissed him. His hand released her slender neck and slid over her shoulders . He pulled back. "I'm still going to kill you." Her own arms reached over his shoulder, the handle of her butcher's knife digging into his back. She kissed him again. "I think."

XXXXXXXX

_I'm afraid I can't/won't get too far into writing smut. So the requested "hot JackxLovett action" probably won't happen. Not with narration, anyway. Sorry. Hope you enjoyed it anyway._


	4. Chapter 4

**Kidney Pie – Part IV**

-"A Gentleman Knocks"-

In the black silence of the barber shop, the rasp of an opening blade cut through the freezing air. _Bitch. _Sitting hunched in his deadly chair, Sweeney snapped the razor closed. How could she not notice, not say anything at all until she brought him his supper? It was _Mrs. Lovett_, for bleeding pity's sake. She could _never_ stop fawning over him, never mind actually leave when he refused to let her in. She'd hardly even _tried_ to change his mind.

Which meant, of course, that if he _did_ change his mind, he would be the weaker of the two; or if he ate any of the untouched food outside his door. So he wouldn't take a bite or say a word to her until she gave in. He _couldn't_.

But he was starving. He flipped the razor open again and shut it hard. _Whore_.

He scowled into the shadows. How long had the shop been closed? Two hours? Three? Maybe if Nellie was asleep he could sneak downstairs and find something to eat. Even one of her bloody pies would be better than being defeated by her and her cooking. Standing, he moved through the dark to step on the chair's lever, listening through the bloodstained passage for any sounds from the bakehouse. He heard nothing.  
He crossed silently to the door and slipped out, stepping carefully over the tray of cold food. Below, the lights of the pie shop spilled into yellow pools at the foot of the stairs, but no shadow moved across the windows. _What-?_ If she was awake and wasn't working in the shop, what was she doing?  
Sweeney kept low behind the rotting railing as he crept slowly down towards the courtyard. A glance into the kitchen told him nothing. It was deserted. But the other lights were off, the little house eerily silent. She must have forgotten to turn the light out. More confident, he crept into the shop, opening the door slowly enough to hush the swaying bells.

The quiet in the shop bothered him, somehow, as if the building should be as chattery-lively as it owner. It suddenly seemed odd to think that she even slept. Shaking the thought away, he let his eyes scan the counter instead. It would be too risky to stay long enough to cook something, but a pie would do well enough. And fortunately, she had forgotten a tray of them on the counter. He strode anxiously across the room, surprised by his own eagerness to escape the stillness, but froze when he saw what lay on the scarred, floury wood. Mrs. Lovett's cooking things were thrown and scattered around a half-eaten pie and a crumpled, red-lettered note. And in the center of the wreckage lay a battered top hat. Mr. Todd suddenly felt like his heart had just dropped through his trick chair. _Nellie…_

She should have known better than whisper with the likes of him, should know better than dress like a whore with that one running loose. _What was she thinking?_ If she got herself torn up like that bloody beggar, she'd deserve it. _She'll deserve it for not being content with me…_

He suddenly felt sick. His fingers clenched around the hat's worn brim, he ran towards her bedroom. "Nellie!" Red-stained visions raced through his mind as he reached her door. But the cluttered room on the other side was dark and clean. And empty.

"_Mrs. Lovett!_" His shout rattled the baubles lining her shelves. The boy would probably wake up, but let him. They'd both look for her. _Where is she? _"_TOBY!"_ The bakehouse! The thought of Nellie gutted amidst the bits of his butchered clients made his empty stomach churn as he raced desperately back towards the kitchen.

As he turned the corner into the light he nearly ran into the baker. "Mr. Todd!" Breathing heavily, she almost collapsed against him as he came to a frozen halt. Her clothes were disheveled, her corset missing, and her ratty hair hung loose. Against her pale collarbone she held one of her grubby dishrags, all but hiding the trace of smeared blood that stained her snowy skin. _No._ He felt is cold fear burn away as he snatched her arm away. The cloth pulled away to reveal a deep gash carved in her flesh.

"What did you do?" His voice was a growl, making her back cautiously away from him.

"I…I was working on the meat grinder, love. Something got jammed in here, had to fish it out, I did. Just got a little caught on one of the blades…"

_She's a clever one, my pet. _"And your corset?"

"You ever tried working in one?"

"And your hair?"

"It… it must've…"

"And_ this?_" He held up the top hat, his eyes burning blackly. Mrs. Lovett stared back at him, speechless, but he didn't notice that her frightened eyes were no longer fixed on him until he felt the old hat tugged out of his hand.

"Thanks, old boss."

Sweeney's fingers leapt to his razor before he could even think, and the Ripper staggered clumsily back as he turned with the blade flashing. Jack, too, looked very quickly dressed, his black coat cast off like his reclaimed hat and his tie hanging loose. But in his hand was a long knife, it's edge gleaming with the deep, handsome scarlet of blood. _Her_ blood. On _his_ knife.

_Bastard!_ Mr. Todd raised his arm to strike again as his rival crouched with his greedy knife ready to fly up and plunge under the barber's ribs. But before either could spring, Nellie leapt between them, her open palms held out to ward off the steel and silver closing in on her. "No you don't, the both of you stop it now!" There was still fear in her voice, but her manner was as collected as ever. She turned to her tenant as both men lowered their blades reluctantly. "Mr. Todd, I…"

Sweeney didn't want to hear it. Clutching his razor tighter, he turned and made for the door, pushing Mrs. Lovett into the Ripper as he stormed away.

-"Get out!"

"Mr. T!" Falling against Jack, Nellie pushed away from him and followed the barber outside. "Wait!" She reached the foot of the stairs in time to see him vanish into his shop, slamming the door behind him. She knew it was dangerous to follow him even as she gathered her skirts and started up the steps, but she had to explain. "Mr. Todd! Let me in!" The door was latched but she pounded frantically at it.

Only when a crashing soap mug fly into the door from the other side, driving spider web fractures into the glass panes, did she scramble back. She stood for a moment on the landing, thinking. She could deal with Sweeney when he calmed down. Until then, she had other problems. Her frustration started bubbling as she hurried down the stairs.

Inside the shop, her problem leaned casually against the counter, chewing contentedly on his forgotten pie. "Delicious, my dear. Absolutely delicious."

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

The Ripper looked up, startled, for a moment, as though he had already forgotten the rival who would have killed him. "Oh, _him_ you mean. Sorry, love. If I'd known he was the jealous type…"

Her anger flared a little higher. " I have been waiting for that man for _fifteen bloody years _and now I finally have my chance and you come barging in here and-"

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Eleanor, but it seemed to me I wasn't the only one enjoying myself back there."

"I-" _True_… She knew she'd gone far beyond just giving in. She fought off the memory of the Ripper's knife gliding cold across her skin … "Well, it's been a long time."

"Too long, it sounds like." He raised his hands innocently as she stepped towards him, her face a mask of outrage. "I'm not complaining, sweetheart. You were fantastic. But why wait so long? For him. If he doesn't love you."

That was the one thing Nellie refused to hear. "Get out."

"But _I_ love you!"

"Is that why you were going to kill me!?"

"Well, I didn't!" He looked away sullenly as she glared at him, pouting slightly. "Yet."

"Out. Right now." Jack pressed his back resolutely against the edge of the counter, scowling. Mrs. Lovett let out an exasperated sound as she marched around the counter. She flung his discarded coat at him.

Turning, he gave her a wounded, childlike look. "But I-" She shoved the pies, tray and all, into his arms. Sweeping around the counter like a storm, she took the bewildered Ripper by the ear and dragged him to the door. "But – Love! Eleanor – I… Oo-ooh! Don't!"

"You get out, and if you want more bloody pies…" She tore the door open, the bells screaming, and shoved him through the still-opening gap. "You can come back when you learn to keep your hands to yourself!"

He twisted around as she pushed him out, wedging himself in the doorway, and for a moment was the fiend of Whitechapel again. "I'll remember this, you know! Let me in!" Mrs. Lovett hardly heard him as she shoved furiously at his shoulder. His voice and face softened a little. "Think about it." His grip on the door frame gave a little. "Please?" With one more heave, he fell back into the courtyard, letting her close the door and bolt it behind him. "I- I'll write you, then, shall I, love?" With a sigh, Nellie leaned against the wood and slide down it to the floor.

-"But I will get him back Even as he gloats"-

_Whore!_ The precious picture frame hurtled through the dark shop as Sweeney ransacked his little desk for something else to throw, to destroy. He tore his leather strop from the wall and sent it flapping. _Filthy slut!_ The heavy sharpening stone followed it. _You lying beautiful bitch…_

Exasperated, he flung himself into his chair, his clever mechanical partner, as if it could comfort him. It couldn't, and in barely the space of a breath he was pacing again. _How could she?_ He provided for her, he relied on her. She swore she loved him. He…

He loved her. And, bloody hell, how he hated her! He gave out a deep breath as he slowed his pace and wandered to the window. He let himself imagine her dying, the startled look on her face as he killed her, the scarlet stream gushing from her slit throat. He let himself imagine that would satisfy him. _But she'd rather have her throat cut by dear old Jack…_

Looking down, he could see him now, standing outside in the courtyard, tapping and rattling Nellie's door. His coat lay across the ground nearby. He watch as the Ripper finally gave up and turned away, drifting all forlorn down Fleet Street.

Nellie _could not_ choose that over him. It wasn't possible. He'd make sure of that. _I will have her!_

XXXXXXX

_Thanks for reading, everybody. And thank you for the reviews. My apologies for Sweeney not being in the last chapter. And the smut. Sorry, it's all Jack's fault. He and Missus L just wouldn't keep their hands off each other. I had to go get the garden hose just to end it where I did!_

_Just a heads up, updates may come slower for a while. I am going to enter a writing contest, so I'll have a deadline to meet and, well, this'll just take a backseat. But I'll still be working on it as time allows._

_I'm going to try to write a serious story about our Jack for the contest. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!_


	5. Chapter 5

**Kidney Pie- Part 5**

"You're a Bloody Wonder"

Morning found Mrs. Lovett extremely sore. The deep gashes Jack had sliced into the flesh of her stomach were stiff and dry and burned as she tightened the strings of her corset. _Damn his eyes.._. Jack the Ripper was probably not the best choice for her first lover in such a long time. Not that she _had_ chosen him, exactly. If Mr. Todd had only been a bit more cooperative...

Wincing, she walked stiffly to the kitchen to make Sweeney his breakfast. _Or Toby's breakfast..._ Bringing the barber food was more ritual than anything else. Each morning she hoped he might finally accept it, take one bite, move the bloody spoon a smidge to one side so she could pretend he may have _thought_ about taking a bite. But it wouldn't happen today. Not after what he saw last night. Her eyes swept the floor as she reached the plain little room, hoping there was no blood left for Toby to find. Behind the counter, where they had laid till Sweeney came down, she stooped to wipe away a few sticky streams with a handy rag. Shooting another silent curse at the Ripper, she threw the dirty cloth into the washbasin full of yesterday's water and turned to the counter with a sigh.

Nellie stopped cold as she saw the tray she had left outside the barber's door sitting empty on the stained countertop. Empty. She stared, not quiet registering the possibility that Sweeney had actually eaten anything. _He wouldn't..._ Never forget, never forgive, that was her Mr. Todd. _He couldn't..._ There was no way he would have accepted that food after what he had caught her with...

She let out gasp, her gloved hands flying to her mouth. _Jack! _What if...? She left the thought behind her as she raced out her shop door and up the rickety stairs. "Mr. Todd!" She shouldn't have thrown the Ripper out. What if he _had_ found his way upstairs and..._No!_ She barreled through the door, making the bells behind it ring wildly."Mr. Todd!"

"Mrs. Lovett." The baker faltered, wide-eyed, in the open door, staring at her tenant's back. Sweeney stood, polishing his spotless silver razor, unharmed. And, amazingly, he turned, only slightly stiffly, to face her.

"You... I found... The tray last night..." Suddenly, she felt daft for thinking that because she found the tray in the kitchen, Sweeney had been murdered. And how bloody perfect was it that Sweeney was finally looking at her - really looking - and she had made an idiot of herself. Her pale features started to feel a little warm. "You... You ate your dinner then?"

He kept those dark eyes on her as he nodded. "It was lovely."

She stared back, stunned. "Oh." She watched him for a moment, letting the stinging in Jack's slashes convince her she wasn't dreaming. "I'll fix you some breakfast, then, shall I?"

"Yes, love."

Nodding, Nellie backed out the shop and descended the stairs as uncertainly as if she thought the steps would dissolve beneath her.

"The Lodger"

The Ripper paced his room, a look of deadly intent on his lean face. As his path turned past his desk, jealousy sparked in his blue eyes as they glanced towards the plate of pies sitting on its top and he remembered their baker. _Whore-baker. Beautiful, wonderful, sweet tramp of a pie cook…_

With a sullen growl, he sat on the edge of his bed, crossing his arms like a child. It was obvious that Eleanor- _his_ Eleanor, she _had_ to be- loved the barber upstairs. And it was equally apparent that the bloody man was anything but romantically inclined towards her. She deserved better. _I'd treat her better, if she loved me._ He lay back with a sigh. _If I wouldn't just kill her…_ Closing his eyes, he let himself remember her, the taste of her blood, the way she squirmed under his knife… It would be a hard decision to make, whether or not to cut her gorgeous white throat, but he'd think it through. For her, he could. _Such is love, I guess._

Lost in his thoughts, Jack didn't hear the door open, didn't notice the presence of another person until a shrill, if well-meaning, voice pierced his memories. "My, but we're sleepy this morning, Mr. Jack!" Sitting suddenly upright, he found himself face to face with landlady, her creased and jowled face split by an impossibly innocent smile. "Went out again last night, did you?"

The Fiend of Whitechapel rolled his eyes as she turned to bustle about his little room. "Yes, Mrs. Greely, I did."

She clucked disapprovingly. "You're lucky sleepy's all you are. You know, half the nights you're gone, I hear the next morning that awful Ripper fellow's been after the poor girls again. And what would you do if you ever ran into him? I worry myself sick over you, Jackie, getting in the old devil's way in some dark alley…" The 'old devil' sank back onto his mattress, gritting his teeth, as Mrs. Greely picked up one of his shirts, the sleeves dripping water from where he had washed the blood off the cuffs. "What-? Now, how many times do I have to tell you, dearie, it's the _whole shirt_ that needs washing, not just the sleeves! Heavens, Jack, but you do need a woman to look after you!"

_Don't remind me_. He scowled at the old woman's round and lumpish back as his thoughts turned painfully back to Mrs. Lovett. He would win her, he _had_ to. But how?

He heard Mrs. Greely squawking for beside his desk. "Oh! Where did these come from!?" He glared at her as she stood over the meat pies. His wet shirts flapping over her pudgy arm, she turned to face him, full of huffy, geriatric outrage. "Mr. Jack! I _hope_ you haven't tired of my cooking!?"

"No, Mrs. Greely, I-" Pausing, Jack sat up again as a thought struck him. "Actually, that's a matter you might be able to help me with." The smile sprang back across his landlady's face, her eyes gleaming at thought of helping him. _Idiot._ But he recalled suddenly the shelves upon shelves of sappy romance novels tucked away in the parlor where she brought her sisters for tea. He had always considered those novels, much like the tea gatherings and, in fact, most of the things Mrs. Greely did, utterly pointless. But perhaps he had been mistaken. "I happen to be – ah…" _Smitten? Enchanted? Madly in love with?_ "…Somewhat fond of the baker of those fine pies. But she… She rather fancies someone else." He paused again, watching his landlasy begin almost a shuffling sort of dance in her excitement. "How should I…?"

"Ooo-ooh! Write her a love poem!" Bouncing heavily across the little space, she reached out and pinched the Ripper's pale cheek with a matronly squeal. "Oh, how _sweet_! Why, it'll be perfect! And you're always writing anyway, writing letters…" She laughed, turning to go. "Who you send them all to I can't imagine, silly thing. You must write almost as many letters as that horrible man, that Ripper fellow…" She bustled away on a wave of merry senility, still chattering. The wake as she shut his door knocked his old top hat off its peg on the wall.

Jack grinned as he stood and crossed quickly to his desk. _Eleanor is as good as mine!_ Mrs. Greely, he supposed, was as daft as she was eager to play at matchmaking, but that, he knew, was to his advantage. That sappy, clueless type always seemed exactly the sort best suited for romance. And where could that bloody barber even _hope_ to find someone as steeped in addle-brained sentimentality as Mrs. Greely?

XXXXXXX

_Sorry about the short chapter. Didn't want to make you wait._

"_The Lodger," if anyone's interested, is a story by Belloc Lowndes. _


	6. Chapter 6

**Kidney Pie – Part … Oh bugger, I've lost count.**

_So… It's been a while. Yeah._

_Please don't kill me. I'd make an awful pie._

"Sounds Very Romantic"

"Mr. Todd!" Sweeney cringed as the door crashed against the shop's wall and Anthony's too-high voice pierced the empty room. "You wanted to see me? Is it about Johanna?"

"No." Gritting his teeth, the barber could already feel his head start to ache. He pressed one hand to his throbbing temple, the fingers of his other hand wrapping tightly around the silver razor he had just been stropping. "Do you always try to break down doors?"

"Sorry, sir." The boy stood anxiously behind the barber chair. His uncertain brown eyes made him look like an overgrown puppy dog. It was sickening. "I thought, maybe, you had…"

"No, Anthony." Mr. Todd had to fight with the next words. There was no way this was happening, no way he needed to ask this moron for advice. For a moment, he almost changed his mind and chose his pride over Mrs. Lovett. But then he pictured the baker all rumpled, manhandled, and the Ripper's smug smile. "I need your help."

"You – Mr. Todd!? – _My _help?" The sailor's sad eyes grew even wider.

"Yes." The fingers closed around the razor's handle started to drum impatiently on its engraved sides. "I need your advice…" Was it normally this hard to speak? "On how to…" _Damn it!_ "How to tell a woman I love her."

Now the dim, staring eyes lit up, excited. "Oh! Mr. Todd, congratulations! I didn't think – Who is it?"

"Mrs. Lovett." Sweeney felt his headache get worse.

"I'm so glad for you-"

"Anthony!" The fingers of his free hand worked at the edges of his dark hair, trying to rub the pain out of his skull. "Just tell me what to do."

The sailor's young brow furrowed for a moment. "Sing her a love song." He smiled a big, stupid smile. "Sing it under her window at night."

Sweeney almost cringed at the image of himself crooning the baker's name outside her dusty shop window. "I don't think so."

"Well…" Anthony thought hard, walking around to sit heavily in the deadly chair. "With Johanna…" _Oh, no._ "I just look at her. All the time."

"What?"

"I just look at her." Those puppy dog eyes drifted dreamily to the window above the barber's head. "I like to think it shows her I'm always there for her."

_This idiot is _not_ marrying Johanna. _Trying hard not to scowl, Sweeney put the razor very carefully down. "What else?"

"Just try and show her how much you care."

Sweeney stared hard at the sailor. _Show her I care… _That might be hard. And anyway, maybe it wasn't worth it. He glanced doubtfully at the floor, imagining living above Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Eleanor Ripper instead of his own Nellie Lovett.

It was worth it.

"I'll send 'em howling."

It was in the middle of the noontime rush that it first occurred to Toby that the man standing at the edge of the courtyard had been there for quite a long time. At first he though the dark figure lingering, half-hidden by the wall, was only the old beggar woman, but she was dead and much too small and never wore a black coat or top hat. But there were pies to serve and mugs to fill, and he had to let his curiosity wait.

As the afternoon flew by, though, he couldn't help but glance at that corner. At every look, the lingerer grew more monstrous. It was a bogey man, a nightmare, staring around the edge of the soot-stained brick. His intent blue eyes blazed from under a hanging thatch of dark brown hair, and that wicked stare was fixed on him. He reminded the boy of the brooding Mr. Todd. He shuddered, making the mug of ale on his tarnished tray slosh and spill.

"Boy!" Toby turned quickly to the woman waving to him, pausing only to set the mug down quickly beside the man who'd ordered it. "Another pie, please!"

"Yes, ma'am." He ran, forcing his gaze to the ground as he raced around Mrs. Lovett's bustling patrons towards the pie shop itself. The baker herself was standing for a moment at the counter, smiling as Mrs. Horace, the tailor's wife, spoke. Turning to her helper as he approached, she looked so tired.

"Another one, love?" She picked up a steaming pie, her thin white fingers lightly pressed against the hot crust as she placed it on his tray. "Fresh out of the oven."

"Thank you, mum."

"And be sure you stop and have one yourself once it slows down a bit." Toby gave her grin as he backed out, hearing over the bell's bright jangling Mrs. Lovett's voice saying something like "that's my angel." He smiled wider, even as he turned and his eyes shot over the crowded chaos of the yard to the far corner. But it was finally empty. Perhaps, he though, it was another hint of the magic his new mum had worked in his life.

Until a hand fell on his shoulder, making him squeal as he was spun around and pulled back toward the pie shop's grimy walls. Towering over him was his shadow man. His lean face, almost as white as the collar of his shirt, and the long black coat that hung off his skeletal frame made him look like a ghost. Or a fiend. His blues eyes flashed with a feverish light as he gave what might have been an encouraging smile. Toby felt his hands start to tremble, making the hot pie slide across its scratched surface until the stranger's long fingers, sticking out of the mangled remains of stained white gloves, stopped it at the edge. "Easy now, lad." The man stooped, crouching to look the boy in the face. "There, no, you're a good boy, yeah? What's your name?"

"T-tobias, sir."

"Ah, that's a nice name for a good hard-working boy. Are you Mrs. Lovett's son?"

"Yes, sir. I mean no, sir, not really. She sort of took me in…"

"Well, that's good enough. Listen, tell your mum for me, when you get the chance, that her friend Jack – remember that- has something for her. Something nice, tell her." The wild eyes searched his face. "You got that?" Toby nodded. "I'll see you later, pal. Keep up the good work." Toby almost fainted as soon as Jack's back was turned.

"Four and Whore Rhyme Alright"

"What's wrong, dearie?" The last few pennies of the day were in Nellie's hand as she finished her final count, but she was looking not at the stacks of copper and silver on the counter, but at Toby. The boy glanced nervously at the shop's closed door as he swept the floor.

"Nothing, mum." He studiously watched the vanishing dust and crumbs for a minute, but then glanced quickly toward to door again. "Do you think we should lock the door now, mum?"

It _was_ getting late, but Mrs. Lovett looked hard at her helper, setting down the coins. "Alright, what aren't you telling me, hm? Why so anxious? "

"No reason , mum, only…" He peered over his shoulder at the window, as if he suspected he would see someone looking in. "There was this man…"

"What do you mean a man?" She couldn't help but smile at her overprotective little boy. "Lots of men come in here."

"He was watching the shop for hours! He told me to say he was a friend of yours, and that he was going to bring you something, but he looked so…"

_Oh no._ The warmth she felt for Toby's sweet concern faded a bit. _I should've known he wouldn't be so easy to get rid of. _"He didn't have a top hat, did he?"

Both their eyes leapt to the door as the bells let out a faint jingle. Toby gasped as a familiar, top-hatted head peeked uncertainly around the edge of the door.

"Hello, Jack."

"Good evening, Mrs. Lovett." The Ripper edged a little further into the shop, his mad eyes darting nervously around the kitchen. "May I come in?"

Nellie nodded. "Brought me something to cook, did you?" Her little helper moved carefully back towards her as Jack stepped out from behind the door. "It's alright, Toby. Jack's a friend. Why don't you go sit in the parlor, love."

"Wait now, I've brought something for him, too." Jack leapt forward as Toby started for the next room, making the boy stop in his tracks.

"What- ? Sir? For me?" The boy and baker both looked at the killer in astonishment as he fumbled in his coat pocket.

"Of course for you. 'Cause I seen what busy little man you were today, what a good help to his mummy." He pulled out a small package, wrapped in green paper. "Every good lad deserves a nice present." Toby accepted the parcel with trembling fingers.

"Take it in the other room, love, so we can have a nice chat, Jack and I." Mrs. Lovett wasn't sure she still felt as hostile as she sounded. The Ripper looked at her uncertainly as Toby ran for the shelter of the little sitting room.

"Are you still mad at me?"

"What do you think?" Actually, she wasn't sure what to think herself, since Sweeney actually seemed strangely more considerate to her since he had caught her with Jack. She even thought she had seen his watching her from the rickety landing or his wide shop window while she worked.

"I hope I didn't make any trouble for you…" Doffing his worn out hat, Jack stood like a penitent schoolboy in the middle of the empty kitchen. _And this is the Fiend of Whitechapel. _She almost laughed.

"No, you didn't."

"Oh, good!" His manner brightened in a heartbeat as he crossed the space between them with the speed of a shifting shadow. "'Cause I brought you something special. And it's not even innards, this time." She couldn't help grinning as Jack drew a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket. "I wrote you a poem to tell you how much I love you. I'll read it, listen.

"Your hair is red like blood at night

Your skin is like the fog so white

And like a dash from Scotland Yard

You make my heart beat fast and hard.

I think of you while I'm at work

And while in alleyways I lurk,

And even when I kill a whore

It only makes me want you more."

Mrs. Lovett tried to strangle a chuckle. _How perfect. _Jack's mad blue eyes left the paper to meet hers for a second. He must have heard the smothered laugh.

"I love your eyes' dark, cunning gleam.

I love your body, soft and lean.

I love your dainty hands so small.

I love your lips, but most of all,

I love your throat, with pulsing life.

I long to stroke it with my…"

Those tell-tale eyes glanced away again as Jack paused. "…hand." Nellie stared at him, stunned. And impressed. "It really does say 'hand.'"

"That…" She fought for a moment to keep her smile from spreading, but gave up. _Why not? _After all, who else ever wrote her a love poem? Albert, poor thing, just didn't have the brains for it and Mr. Todd… "That is possibly the most romantic thing anybody has done for me."

A grin split the Ripper's narrow features as he eyed her with an absurd bashfulness. "Does that mean I can stay another night?"

Drawing herself up, the baker wagged a finger at him with half-pretend severity. "I have a business to run, don't you forget. And I'm still sore from the last time you decided to pay me a little visit. If you stay, you'll have to sleep by the fire with Toby."

"I'd sleep on the cold ground outside for you, Eleanor!"

"Yeah, I'm sure you would, love." Mrs. Lovett walked around the counter and put a flour-stained hand on the Jack's shoulder to push him lightly towards the parlor. The fire in the other room had been burning for some time, and it was already quite warm. "Not exactly the lap of luxury, but I suppose you'll be too tired to care, since I hear you've been busy stalking me all day." The Ripper flashed her a crooked smile as she shoved him playfully to a battered old chair by the hearth.

"Sorry, love. A chap just can't help himself."

"Well, you'd better behave yourself tonight. I won't have you corrupting my poor Toby." She glanced over to the boy. Sitting on his couch, a stunned Toby still clutched a brand new switch-blade knife, the remnants of its torn green wrapping scattered in his lap. Nellie gave her guest a look, but could only shake her head as she walked away. "Goodnight, boys."

XXXXX

_My apologies for taking so bloody long. I have finished both my semester at school and my serious Jack the Ripper story. Which turned out pretty darn good. I will not be posting it anywhere, as I have further plans for it and would not like it to be hijacked. Yes, I'm a tad paranoid. __**But –**__ I think most people here who review my work regularly are trustworthy folks and I would be willing to show you it if you like. I'd warn you, though, that the style is different and __**It. Is. Not. Funny. **__It is actually downright sad. _

_If you'd like to see it, either put your email address in your review or email me at reedstalker at yahoo dot com._

_Otherwise, thanks to everybody for wishing me luck and for reading, and Merry Christmas, folks._


	7. Chapter 7

XXXXXXX

In the warm, dim darkness of Mrs. Lovett's living room, Jack picked restlessly at a patch sewn into his warn out black vest. He had already undone the thread along one frayed edge as he tried to while away the deadly dull hours since the baker had sat him down and gone straight to her own bed. He never had seen her bedroom yet. _Oh, what I could do in a nice bedroom, with no witnesses, no filthy cops walking by. _His tired mind flooded with scarlet images, impulses that raced, grating, along his nerves and made his long fingers ache for his knife. He could feel it. He had spread his thin coat over him, and the knife lay against his leg through the cloth of the pocket he kept it in.

He wondered idly what Eleanor wore to bed, and whether she would wake up if he crept down the hallway. He wondered how much she would struggle if he cut her pale, soft body before he slit her throat.

_No! Not her._ Blinking the bloody thought away, he shook his head hard. _Pies, Jack! _The pies were good. Eleanor was better. But he hadn't ripped anyone since that beggar. Even as he forced himself to relax, his hands were all but twitching in their eagerness for more work.

Eleanor was worth it. _She had better be._

XXXXXXX

The moon glared down between the thick, clotted knots of cloud that drifted slowly over London, casting ghostly shadows through the window of Sweeney Todd's Tonsorial Parlor. The barber himself stared at the twisting little shades as he sat in his wicked chair. He had been up all night thinking of the baker sleeping under the scuffed, moon-dusted floorboards. He had tried all day to watch her, and although he thought she had seen him, she hadn't said anything about it when she'd brought him his supper. _So much for Anthony's watching._

Whatever he did, it would have to be fast. Every day she spent thinking of that bloody Ripper made his hatred well up a little higher. Mrs. Lovett had to be his before it overflowed.

"_Sing her a love song…"_ But he didn't know any. He had forgotten them all too long ago to dredge the words up out of his memories.

_"Just show her you care…" _He was afraid that, too, required a set of lyrics he'd lost, although he tried to remember them until the gray light of dawn began to glaze his window.

"Can't wait to start again."

"Oh, bugger. I forgot you were here." Jack tried to restrain his anxiously tapping heel as that exclamation interrupted the steady stream of mumbling from the kitchen. The baker's perfect form was silhouetted in the doorway, and as he stood to meet her he saw the light from the kitchen falling on flashing patches in her black dress. And on the bare white flesh of her shoulders. The Ripper felt his jaw drop open, but couldn't quite close it. The top she had worn the night he first stumbled into her shop hadn't shown half so much soft, unscarred skin. "Jack?"

He stepped forward, still staring. He thought of the night he came back, of her body pressed between his and the counter. He thought of her smile when he read her the poem.

He thought of her guts thrown across the floor of her shop, her heart still warm in his hand, her

blood trickling down his arm_. No._

_Not her. Not yet. _He had to get out. He looked frantically around the confines of the little shop, but Fleet Street was already lined with hungry customers waiting for the shop to open. There was no chance of an unobtrusive exit that way, no escape from the bloody beauty in front of him. Set in the far wall, behind the counter, a heavy iron door hung half-open, revealing nothing but darkness behind it. It wasn't an escape, but if he could hide until he found a way to slip away from the shop, it would be better than spending the day staring at Eleanor and wishing

You stay out of there!" He heard the baker's steps running close behind, but he had already started down the steps. He almost flew down, leaving her to dash through the echoes of his flight. "I don't let nobody down in the bakehouse!"

She almost ran into the Ripper as he stood staring at the reeking chamber he had escaped to. Yesterday's pies waited cold on a long table. Other workbenches were piled with rotting limbs and entrails or thick with rancid, clotted blood.

It was heaven.

"Brought you some breakfast, love."

For the first time in a long time, the first stirrings of the crowd on Fleet Street weren't enough to hold Sweeney's attention on his shop's great window. A glance at the door had worked itself subtly into his morning's lonely rhythm. He was waiting for Mrs. Lovett.

She usually brought him breakfast by now. He didn't mind the food being late. He didn't feel much like eating anyway, and the thought of forcing down a plate of toast and eggs to flatter the baker only made him feel worse. But he could only worry when she didn't appear.

_What if she never does? _Would it mean she had finally forgotten him?

He shook the thought off, picking up instead the soap mug full of hot water from the kettle to work up a lather for his next customer, smiling as the suds heaved violently around the brush and spilled over the mug's chipped sides. The sooner that customer came, the better. A little blood might do him good.

Or a little breakfast.

_She's not already working, is she?_ Crossing to his chair, he pushed the lever flat and listened. Somewhere below, the hollow chop of a meat cleaver drifted up from below. _She couldn't… _He listened longer, heard the sound of steel meeting flesh grow sharper and faster. _She didn't…_ The trapdoor swung shut with a groan. _She has._

Sweeney stared hopelessly into the swirling dust that floated in the barbershop's stale air. He didn't turn even as the jingling bells above his door cheerily offered him fresh blood. He didn't hear the new arrival's voice, or the sound of a tray clattering as it was set down on his table. He was staring, lost.

Until Nellie's face came into his view, her hand resting on his arm. "Mr. T? Can you hear me? Are you alright?"

_What!?_

"Her Ardent and Eager Slave"

"_Curse it!"_ Bracing his feet against the damp stone floor, Jack readjusted his grip on the handle of the massive grinder and gave it a heave. Slowly, the gears began to turn again inside the iron casing, gaining speed until he felt the blades halt again with a dull clank. _Blasted machine! _Pulling back again, he tried to force it through, but with no more success. "Look, you miserable, bloody cuss of a… of a _thing_…" The two corpses he had found in the cellar had long since gone stiff, and Mrs. Lovett insisted that they needed to go through the grinder three times. He hadn't even finished the first run when the damned thing had gotten stuck. Furious, he cranked the handle forward and back against the snag like a boy in a tantrum until he gave up and leaned instead against the contraption's filthy metal side. At that moment, there was nothing he hated more. "You behave yourself or I'll have you in pieces, you…""You've jammed it." Starting, the Ripper turned to see the barber standing behind him, tense anger written in his pale features.

"Have I?"

Taking off his fingerless gloves and rolling back his sleeves, Sweeney crossed to the meat grinder and knelt beside the massive tray of day-old corpse. "I'll take care of it."

Jack crept reluctantly back to the counter, its top still holding a rigid, contorted corpse, and watched carefully as Mr. Todd worked. The other man twisted and pulled away the iron ring that held together the machine's parts and removed the grinding plate to reach into the still blades. It seemed too strange to note his obvious familiarity with the device, as if it were an odd intimacy afforded only to Mrs. Lovett's partner-in-crime. "This is all your set up, then?"

"Yes."

Jack picked up a sharp kitchen knife from the table, idly inspecting its edge before sticking it forcefully into the corpse beside him. "It's nice and all." He twisted the handle, willing himself to look at the churning gore around the blade instead of the barber's back. "Always thought it'd be fun to work indoors. No witnesses, no police…" There was no reply. "Hard, though. Most of them whores haven't got any home."

"Pity." Sweeney stood and turned back, tossing the Ripper the item, that had been lodged in the grinder's blades. It was a badly mangled hand. Jack managed a dry chuckle.

"Must've been a little over eager." Staring again at Sweeney, he set the offending limb on the table. "Well, that's you done, eh, boss?"

"That's Todd. Sweeney Todd. And I think I should stay, don't you?"

"God, That's Good!"

_"Delicious!"_

_"I can't believe these pies!"_

_"Can't you smell that!? Ooh!"_

Surrounded by orders and the appreciation of her customers, it was easy for Mrs. Lovett to forget that there was one murderer above her shop and another below. There was simply no time to consider the problem of Jack the Ripper. Or whether he was a problem at all. He did make her feel rather nice, and if she had to wait for Sweeney anyway, why wait alone?

Carefully balancing a tray of pies, Nellie forced her way through the crowd, head high. She never got tired of this success. After fifteen years of failure, she needed every second of this.

_"Oh, these pies are heaven!"_

She'd been alone for just as long. Now she had Toby, and was so very close to having her Mr. Todd.

And Jack. For so many years, she couldn't even get anybody to set foot in her shop. And now she had someone she had to chase away, someone who actually wanted to be with her.

_What's the harm, so long as he behaves himself… _She looked up toward the barbershop's bleak window. _…And Mr. Todd don't find out._

"My Funny Little Games"

As he worked, Sweeney tried to focus on the constant, muffled grinding of gears and squelching of churning meat, tried to ignore the Ripper's presence. It was harder to do than he had hoped. Every chop as cleaver met bone, every wet slap of flesh on the filthy countertop cut right through the steady noises of the grinder. As he slowly turned the handle, he found himself still staring at the back of his rival's shabby black vest.

_Useless bastard._ Jack chuckled as he used the heavy butcher's knife to splinter the second corpse's ribs. He obviously saw this as playtime. Sweeney scowled. _I don't know what she sees in him. _Hepaused his work to move to the other side of the grinder so that he faced the wall, but gritted his teeth as the Ripper laughed again.

Closing his eyes, he tried to focus, willing images of his revenge into his mind. _No, better - Nellie._ He pictured Mrs. Lovett there in the bakehouse, stripping the flesh from Judge Turpin's bones. _Or maybe she should chop up Jack the Rip-_

_Splat!_

Mr. Todd leapt away from the sound as a dark piece of flesh spattered against the metal beside his head. Behind him, his unwelcome companion tried to stifle a fit of laughter. "Sorry, old boss. Slippery things, spleens are." Sweeney turned a seething glare from the dripping projectile lying at the grinder's base to the laughing man behind him. _This is it. _The organ squished between his fingers as he snatched it from the floor and hurled it back at Jack and catching him right in the face.

For a second, the Ripper blinked at him, stunned, shaking blood and slime from his face. Then a wicked smile split his features. He all but dove into the carcass on the table, tearing out more organs. Sweeney couldn't help grinning himself as he reached for fistfuls of pie filling. _See how you like it raw, Jack..._

"Fresh Supplies?"

_"Another pie here!"_

_"One for me, please!"_

_"When you get a moment, Nellie dear..."_

The pie shop was mobbed. Once the afternoon rush had flooded in, Mrs. Lovett could barely even keep track of Toby through the tides of hungry guests. And before long, last night's batch of pies she'd brought up earlier from the bake-house would be gone before long.

Brushing a strand of loose hair out of her face, she stepped out into the yard with another tray of reheated pies. There were more in the little oven beneath her counter, but if the crowds didn't thin soon, she'd need to bake more. She had already rolled out great sheets of crust. But she'd need to go down and get the filling. _Jack had better be keeping up. _She didn't even know how many of Sweeney's customer's he'd have to deal with.

_"Tuppeny pork, please, ma'am."_

_"Ale here! Where's that boy?"_

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man start up the stairs to the barbershop. Only a minutes ago he'd ordered his third pie, and now he's go to Sweeney to have his greedy little throat cut. A little thrill pulsed through her; she felt so close to the barber, as if the man was a secret messenger between them.

But then, of course, he'd go straight down to Jack. She shook off the thought and tried to focus on handing out the pies. It didn't matter anyway, as long as Mr. Todd never knew.

Nellie had to look twice when she saw the man walk back across the busy courtyard, as rough about the chin as before.

_Oh, bugger._

XXXXXXX

_Splat!_ What Sweeney vaguely thought to be a lung bounced wetly off his shoulder as he ran for the shelter of the oven. With his back pressed against the hot, thick, steel, he listened to the sound of more innards hitting the front of the giant stove and the splattered fluids hissing on the metal door. _Move, Jack. Come on out._ A loud cracking sound echoed through the cellar, and in a moment the barber found himself watching the misshapen remains of a human brain slide down the wall in thick gray lumps. He smiled. The Ripper needed to crack skulls open, he was running out of ammunition. And to get more, he'd have to leave the cover of the counter. _Come on, Jackie. Sweeney's waiting._

Slowly, very faintly, he heard footsteps move away out into the open center of the bakehouse. _One...two... three... _There was a pause. Another piece of meat bounced harmlessly off the oven. _Four... five... _Sweeney reached down and picked up a hand from the pile of mangled tidbits beside the oven. Jack must have been almost halfway across the room. _...seven...eight...nine..._ The hand's rotting skin oozed under his fingers as he shifted his grip, ready to throw. _Ten... eleven..._

_Now! _Leaping from his hiding place, he flung the hand as hard as he could. Jack startled, caught in his sneak attack, and the hand struck him squarely in his stomach with a muffled _whump. _"Oof!" Ducking back into his shelter, Sweeney fought back his first genuine laugh in a long time as the hand flew back at him. Outside, the footsteps flew now as Jack raced around the other side of the oven. With no room to dodge, Mr. Todd froze as his opponent leapt into sight swinging a tangle of intestine from the heap by the oven. Howling with laughter, he was gone again, leaving Sweeney to shake the green loops of gut from his hair.

Jack raced for the counter on the far side of the bakehouse and the reeking pile of ammunition it offered, but Sweeney flung the guts back at him and bolted as the strands wrapped and tangled around the Ripper's feet and made him fall. But Jack was still closer. As he ran, Mr. Todd saw his rival twist as he tried to rise, kicking the entrails off his ankles. He ran faster, almost crashing into the table top as he arrived a split second before Jack flung himself the last leap.

Panting, Sweeney stared at his opponent, at the wild blue eyes fixed on his own. Both combatants' hair were stiff and caked with blood and the slime of rotting meat. Both their pale faces and rolled back sleeves were spattered with the same dark gore. And they both grinned as they sized each other up. Sweeney couldn't help but admit that Jack was a lot of fun. _And I'll have a lot more fun killing him._

The undeclared truce shattered as suddenly as it stared. Sweeney plunged both hands into the mound of meat and shoved whole handfuls straight into the Ripper's face. _How do you like kidneys now, Jack!?_ Jack lost no time following suit. Eyes closed and breath held, the two killers stood, each blindly trying to smother the other with offal.

Seconds passed, stretching out as Mr. Todd fought. His breath grew harder to hold, threatening to burst out as his hands closed around something slick and squishy. Lunging at the Ripper, he bore down harder than ever until he was rewarded with a muffled outburst from the edge of his reach. Jack staggered back from the table, coughing and gagging. "Eugh! Foul play! Poison! Help!" Sweeney too backed away, gasping for air and wiping slime from his face. Watching his opponent curse and spit, he felt a dark surge of triumph as he wondered what piece of anatomy he had just forced the Ripper to taste. "Filthy.... That was below the belt, Todd!" Doubled over, Jack could only illustrate his frustration by weakly lobbing a nearby piece of liver at the barber. "Ugh..."

Sweeney watched the chunk fall uselessly beside that grate that led into the sewer. _Now _that's_ a charming notion... _Reaching down, he pried the heavy grate out of the floor.

Jack looked up as he heard the scrape of steel on stone, and stood bolt upright when he saw the barber lift the grate overhead to throw it. With a heavy _crack_, it connected with the Ripper's forehead, knocking him flat and silent on the floor. Sweeney's hand moved for his razor as he stepped over the open manhole...

And onto the forgotten liver. Squealing under his weight, it slid underneath him. He hit the sewer walkway just as the sound of an opening door rang through the cellar.

XXXXXXX

"Mr. Todd! It's not what you think!" Mrs. Lovett came to a dizzy halt at the foot of the stairs only to find her words echoing uselessly through the empty bakehouse. No cleaver hacked at the stillness. No butcher's arm stirred the hot, stale, putrid air. _Where...? _Even if Jack and Sweeney _had_ gotten to each other, at least one of them still should have been there. "Jack?" No answer. "Mr. T?"

Carefully, she edged towards the red glow that shone through the peephole in the oven's door. If Jack had been using anything else for light, it was out now and the gloomy silhouettes of her own counters suddenly seemed frightening. For just a moment, she wished she could have fallen for a baker or a greengrocer instead of a pair of murderers. "Is anyone here? Jack?" Her foot hit something solid.

Quickly stooping, Nellie felt blindly at the thing in from of her, finding a hand, narrow shoulders, a throat intact. Her fingers hesitated at his collar, oddly unsure of themselves, before shaking the figure. "Wake up, now. Who is this?" A little groan drifted up from the floor. "Mr. Todd?"

The voice that answered her was faint, only a sleepy murmur, and it was not the barber's. "...sixpense for a snuggle, miss?"

"Jack! What the hell happened?" She shook him harder.

"...how'd you like to take a little walk with me..." Nellie slapped him lightly across the cheek, her fingers coming away wet with something. _That better not be blood. _"...stop doing that to my head, love; it hurts..."

"Don' t go nowhere." She patted his strangely slimy chest as she stood and hurried the rest of the way to the oven. Even the warm steel of the latch felt slick to the touch when she pulled it open. _What _is _all this? _Holding out her hands in the yellow light of the flames, she saw her hands were smeared with clotted blood and something fouler.

And then she looked back out into the bakehouse.

Limbs and entrails lay strewn across the floor; walls, floors, and counters sported dark patches of blood; the heaps of leftovers she hadn't yet disposed of were spread across the floors. And in the middle of the wreckage lay Jack.

"What-? How-?" Still beside the oven's gaping door, Mrs. Lovett stood staring at the damage. _What the hell did he do?_ She marched to the counter and snatched the bucket of dirty water that stood there, flinging its contents over the Ripper as she stormed toward him.

"Oh!" Jolted awake, Jack looked wildly around him. "Eleanor! I - We - I mean..." The baker towered over him, looking fit to kill with her pale face flushed and her finely displayed bosom heaving with rage under her black dress. For the first time he could remember, Jack was afraid of a woman. "Oh dear..."

"Jack -" Her voice shook as she spoke, quivering like her tense arms and clenched fists. "Jack Bloody Whatever-the-Hell-your-Name-Is Ripper! _Get out of my shop!"_ He scrambled to his feet, reeling dizzily as he ran for the stairs. Not satisfied, Mrs. Lovett chased him, swinging the empty pail at him. "_OUT!"_

Over the Ripper's stumbling steps, the crack of the pail as she caught up to him, and the furious rustle of her own skirts, she couldn't hear the sigh of relief from the sewer.

XXXXXXX

_I seriously thought I'd have this done a long time ago. Deeply sorry for the delay. If it makes you feel any better, some of the time I should have used to write this was spent trying to bake actual Kidney Pies. If anybody else has the urge to try them - don't. They're so awful I think I'll mail them to people who don't review. Just kidding._


	8. Chapter 8

**Kidney Pie – Part 8**

-"From Hell"-

All the windows were open in Jack's little rented room, letting the cold, foggy air pour in from outside. He missed the coat he'd had to leave at Mrs. Lovett's, but the chill helped his head, so he wrapped himself in his tattered blanket and waited for the pain to go away.

No weather, though, could drive off the memory of his dizzy flight from the bakehouse, his terror as Eleanor threw him, gore-spattered, into Fleet Street , the crack of her rolling pin against his knuckles as he tried to force her door open and escape the crowd that would lynch him or worse if they guessed who he was. His fists tightened around the blanket's frayed edges, drawing it closer over his hunched shoulders as he sat on the edge of his bed. He had run before, but as the leader of the chase, never a creature in a blind panic. He felt an unusual heat in his pale cheeks. _Damn it!_

Standing, he staggered to his cluttered desk, fuming. That shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have been seen, shouldn't have been beaten by that bloody barber, shouldn't have been so damned _afraid._

The blanket slid from his shoulders as he sat. His head started spinning again, making him steady himself against the desk with his right hand as he clawed for paper and ink. As soon, as the page no longer seemed to lurch in from of him, he began to pour his hatred into the crimson scrawl that leapt across the page:

_**Beadle Bamford – Sir….**_

-"I will have you!"-

Sweeney almost trembled with a nervous excitement as he watched the dawn spread silver across the London skyline. In the kitchen below, he heard Mrs. Lovett begin to make his breakfast and prepare for a busy day. She was starting behind. He wondered guiltily how many pies he and Jack had destroyed or failed to make the day before. Still, at least she still had time to see to him. He smiled as he heard the sizzling of what must have been his breakfast. Mrs. Lovett was looking after _him._

He drew in a long breath of cold, groggy morning air, opening his razor's felt-lined case and exposing them gently to the dawn. They smiled. He didn't need to wake them; like him, they never slept. They were always ready, always determined, even to try something new.

Anthony's advice ran through his mind as he held up first one, then another, inspecting each edge in turn. _He_ was ready to try. He had to be. With the Ripper gone, he had the time, the space to win Nellie back.

Below, he heard the faint jingle as the bells above Mrs. Lovett's door. She was coming up. His eyes darted along the bottom edge of window, straining for a glimpse of her reddish curls, a flash of skirt, an elbow cocked out as she held the tray high. He couldn't see her, but he heard the hollow tread of her boots on the steps outside and her muttering grow a little less distant.

_What do I do?_ Letting the baker find him staring at the window would not be enough. He glanced around blankly, nervously, thinking, all his plans flashing and vanishing around Mrs. Lovett's.

_What would I do if it was Lucy? _To his surprise, the ghost of Benjamin Barker and his bright memories weren't hard to summon, although they left him staring around the dark shop, suddenly seeming crowded, until he heard Nellie reach the landing outside his door. _The door…_

Springing to the doorway, Sweeney threw back the bolt and flung it open just as the baker reached for it, one side of the tray balanced on her slender forearm to free her hand. She stared at him, her eyes white and wide in their shadows. She looked half mad. She looked beautiful. She smiled.

"Good morning, Mr. Todd."

"Good morning, Mrs. Lovett."

XXXXXXX

Toby hesitated as he set a mug of ale down beside a customer, his eyes leaping up to the barbershop even as the man slipped a penny into his hand. On most days, he could see Mrs. Lovett's fearsome tenant pacing back and forth beside the window, his dark eyes, lost in the heavy shadows around them, flashing as he glanced angrily into the crowd. Today, he was strangely still. Pale and blurred behind the glass, he looked like a ghost. But it was an anxious anger he inspired, not fear.

Because the longer he watched, the more Toby was sure that it was Mrs. Lovett the barber was looking at.

"Toby!" The baker's voice pulled him away, catching his little head and spinning it toward her. In the middle of the crowded tables, she stood, a few stray beams of sunlight drifting through the foggy clouds to show the red tint of her hair and make the fabric of her new dress glitter. She pointed to a man in a gray jacket. "One for the gentleman, dear."

"Right, mum." He forced an unconvincing smile, but it faded as he turned back to the shop. He tried to lose his worries among the horde of customers, to pretend he was still with Pirelli and had no reason to care about a thing beyond following orders. It wasn't fair, after all, that as soon as he should find a real lady, a real mother, to look after him it should be in the middle of this hell of rear and rotting meat. Pushing open the old door, Toby ran in through the bell's jingling and found a clean mug to fill with ale. He watched grimly as the cup filled.

As he stepped outside, his heart almost stopped. Sweeney Todd was outside on his landing, staring down at Mrs. Lovett. And she, transfixed, stared back.

She was not Pirelli. He loved her, and she was in love, and she needed him.

"What we do for pretty women"

_Benjamin Barker leaned over the polished railing to watch Lucy, who smiled up at him as she shifted a bundle of flowers in her arms to reach for the end of the rail at the foot of the stairs. The sunlight stroked her hair and made her blue eyes sparkle against the matching hues if the flowers and her simple dress. He couldn't help beaming down at her as she climbed the clean steps._

Sweeney didn't have to work to bring up the memories. But as he tried to act them out again, every muscle went rigid, corpselike, as if unwilling to return to anything like life. At the window, though, it was easy. With the cold glass at his palms, he stood, as stiff as his stubborn limbs, and watch her move through the cannibal crowd.

She _was_ easy to watch, damn her, especially with the effect his higher perspective had on her fondness for low-cut dresses. But he needed more, needed to a little further, to get her back.

She saw him. He saw her glance up, look away, then turn her pale face up to him again. But she went back to her work, turning back to hands clamoring for pies. She must have thought it was the filth at her tables that attracted his attention. She needed more.

Sweeney felt his knees suddenly go looser than usual. Step by step, he crossed the stained floorboards at a cripple's pace, remembering how Barker's feet seemed to fly over the same stretch, then dry and sun-warmed. The door creaked and jingled open. The rail groaned as he finally reached it.

Below him, he could hear Mrs. Lovett chattering, her bloody musical Cockney carrying over the murmuring crowd and the chirping of her caged birds. "Nice weather, for London," she was saying. "We could do with a few more days like this." Sweeney forced himself to lean out over the rail. His eyes fell slowly, falling on the dirty red knots of her hair, her bone-white face, and, through the clouds, a rare beam of sunlight wandered down onto the baker.

Even as the light shifted to nothing again, Sweeney felt his weight shift further against the rail, his feet almost losing the landing like Barker's. The wood creaked, and she turned, her white china doll's face, her ghost's face, tilted up to him.

He could see her dark eyes search his face. He could see her lips part slightly, uncertain. He could almost see her breath catch and hold as those eyes met his own.

"Mum!" He saw her head turn before he caught the light cry. "Mrs. Lovett, mum!" His feet sank down to the ancient boards as he saw Toby struggling through the crowd towards them. "I think I can smell the pies burning!" Nellie glanced back up at him as the boy rushed to take her hand. Even as he pulled her away she stayed half looking up at him.

The rest of the world, the noise of the crowd and the smell of burning bone and gut, rushed suddenly back at him as he stood back, feeling strange. He turned back to his shop, scowling as the memories crowded behind his door: _the sun on Lucy's hair, her bright voice as she held up the bouquet she had bought at the market – among a spray of white baby's breath, bunches of forget-me-nots…_

XXXXXXX

"Are you alright, mum?"

"Hm?" Nellie stared vacantly across the now-empty courtyard, a damp rag pressed uselessly beneath her fingers. She was supposed to be wiping down the long tables, scattered with crumbs and drying gobs of gravy. Instead, she looked into the thickening shadows and saw only Mr. Todd, still looking down at her from her memory.

"Mum, are you alright?"

"What?" She snapped her attention snapped to Toby, standing at the foot of the table with his arms full of abandoned plates. "Course, love, I'm fine. Just a little distracted, that's all." She rubbed the cloth quickly over the tabletop.

"Sorry about earlier." She heard his light little steps drift farther away among the clacking of her new plates as he went back about his work.

Her motions slowed as her thoughts leapt again to the barber leaning out above her. "That's alright, dear." Her heart gave an extra thump as she stole a glance at the now empty window. _Bloody pies._ "I'm sure it really did smell like they were burning. Hard to tell in all that stink."

She stopped cleaning, toying idly with the edge of the rag as it lay on the wooden table. "Toby, love?" The clanking dishes paused. "I was just thinking I'd pop in to make us some supper. What would you like tonight?"

"Can't I just have a pie?"

"Yeah, alright, dear, but I'll go cook something for me and Mr. T." She felt a little guilty as she took a step toward the shop, craning to catch a glimpse of the barber above. "Can you manage out here?"

"Yes, mum." Behind her, the plates clicked faster as the boy doubled his speed. Nellie felt another glimmer of guilt before her thoughts were drowned in the blackness behind Sweeney's window. _I'll buy him a toffee or something._

Inside, she hastily lit the little coal-burning stove beneath her counter, almost flinging apie into its sooty gut before reaching for the salt pork she kept in her cabinet. She ran her knife through it quickly and tossed it in a pot, reaching for the sack of potatoes under the counter.

As she continued to cook, she couldn't help looking up at the stairs to the Tonsorial Parlor. She half hoped to see his boots step down or his face peering over the railing. She wanted him to keep watching her, keep feeding the little spark of hope that he might just care about her.

Hadn't that been longing in his eyes, when he had leaned out above her? Couldn't he be upstairs right now, working up the nerve to tell her-

"Ow! Oh, bugger." Nellie jumped as the knife - unwatched while she monitored the steps outside – nicked the side of her finger. She smiled wryly as she put the wounded finger in her mouth and tasted her own blood.

_That's what you get for being foolish. _She held back a bitter chuckle. _If he's up there thinking, it's about that bloody judge._

But he had been looking at _her_.

She pushed the diced potato and onion into the pot, tears forming as she watched the stairs through a cloud of steam.

XXXXXXX

Jack could hear the chimes in Big Ben chiming out three o' clock as he left Mrs. Greeley's in Dean Street. He meant to go straight to the public mailbox at the corner of Flower and Commercial, but found himself wandering past it towards Brick Lane and the Ten Bells Pub.

Leaving it later than he intended, the cold, at least, bothered him less. His hands were full though, with the letter in one and a bottle of gin in the other, and he wished for the pockets in the coat still waiting beside Mrs. Lovett's chair.

Eventually the bottle was gone, left empty and broken in a back street in London proper. He found another gin shop before he managed to post his red-printed note.

It was already dark when he found himself standing unsteadily on a road in Whitefriars, another bottle in one hand and a tart on his arm. In his fist was the letter, now damp and crumpled, addressed to Beadle Bamford.

Before him was a dented mailbox, its blue paint peeling.

Faintly, behind the smoke and towers of the city, St. Dunstan's bells rang. The whore smiled.

"_If one bell rings in the Tower of Bray,_

_Ding-Dong! Your true love will stay…"_

A high-pitched twitter escaped her painted lips as Jack joined in uncertainly. "_Ding-Dong! One bell today…"_ He studied her, trying to remember when she had joined him. She used far too much blush. "Give me one second to post this, sweetheart, and we'll go somewhere nice and private, right?"

XXXXXXX

_Man, all that time since the last update, and you'd **think** I could come up with a funny chapter! Guess not. __Sorry to keep you waiting so long. The next chapter should be up in fairly short order. __"The Tower of Bray," by the way, was in the original production of Sweeney Todd. The Beadle sings it._


	9. Chapter 9

**Kidney Pie – Part 9**

"Can I ask you a question?"

_Look!_ Sweeney Todd sat tense beneath his shop's window, his back pressed against the peeling wall of his shop. _Look. At. Her. Now! _Twisting, he craned his neck toward the window but wouldn't move to see out, to see Nellie. Instead, he cast a bitter glance at Lucy's silver-framed portrait as he slouched again.

He kicked sullenly at the dust on his floor. It was insane. He was moving on. He was feeling again. He was living. And the memories he had to let go of were squeezing him tighter than ever. _Bloody women._

Finally, he forced himself to turn and rise to his knees, peering over the finely blood spattered windowsill. Mrs. Lovett was gone, leaving Toby to tidy up alone. Which meant that the baker herself was inside, cooking his dinner. _Shit._

He scanned the courtyard for any hint of how long she had been gone. There was nothing, only the boy hurriedly wiping down the last of the long tables. His mind raced. Maybe if she hadn't been gone long, there was time to do something, think of anything, to be ready when she came to his door.

He couldn't think of any love songs.

A footstep below his window shattered his thoughts. _Bloody hell._ He listened to her boots crossing slowly to the stairs and climbing.

"_Show her you care…" _He scrambled to his feet and made for his shaving chair. Words ran through his head, trying to piece themselves together to please his landlady. _I love you…_

"_I love you," Benjamin Barker whispered into the crook of Lucy's neck._

The footsteps climbed higher. Something twisted in Sweeney's chest, and he felt himself sag against the back of the chair. And then Mrs. Lovett appeared behind the little window of his door, filling the frame as it swung open.

_She does this every day. It's no different now._ But she hesitated, her eyes – her very soft, black-rimmed, troubled eyes – found his.

Her first step into the shop came slow, but she gained a little momentum as she moved toward the table with the tools of his trade, regaining a shadow of her usual bustle. At least she was quiet. Perhaps that was a side effect of love. Nellie set down the tray, turning to her tenant as the silverware rattled in the silence. "Brought you some supper, love…" Her voice was faint, her eyes fixed again on his own. _Are they always so bright? _"Mr. Todd, can I ask you something?"

"_Just show her you care for her…" _His fingers tightened blindly around the sides of the chair. "Yes."

She took half a step toward him, her white fingers twisting themselves into the black folds of her skirt. "I saw you…" She stopped, still staring. "You… Earlier…" She fell silent again, an unsteady breath welling up in her snowy, spilling chest. "Mr. T, what's going on?"

_I love you. I need you. I want you to be my own for the rest of our lives. _He stared at her, silent, not quite able to move. _Say it! _Looking back at him, Mrs. Lovett looked different. She hovered, hesitated; her strength seemed to soften in a heartbeat. She was not just a baker, not just his accomplice. She was a woman. _Say it!_

"_Ben, why don't you close up early?" Lucy put her arms around Benjamin's neck, and he could see her need for him written subtly in every line of her face. "It'll be just the two of us, and little Johanna…"_

_Say it!_

"Mr. Todd…?" She stepped weakly forward, watching, pleading.

_**I love you. Say it!!!**_

"Mr. –"

"_NO!" _Nellie froze. The room around him froze. Sweeney burned. _Shit._

XXXXXXX

_No? _Slowly, Mrs. Lovett felt herself sinking. "No? Mr. T, what do you mean, no?"

Something awful crossed the barber's face as he turned suddenly to his window. She watched his back, watched the tension swell beneath the worn cloth of his vest. She faltered. _Of course. _He didn't care. He wouldn't ever, or couldn't. "But – then, why...?"

Sweeney's fingers clamped around the old wood of the windowsill, his face leaning close to the dingy glass. In the pale, transparent reflection, she saw his lips move. She read more than heard the faint word, "Leave."

_What did you expect?_ Nellie suddenly wished she could shrink into the shadows of the barbershop. _After all these years… How could you be so stupid? _But he really had – It seemed like… Her vision started to melt into teary shadows. _How could he do this to me? _"Mr. Todd…"

"I said _out!_"

"Mr. Todd, what's the matter with you?" Her skin, cool from the chill of the barbershop, burned under that tears that rolled hot over her cheeks. _So stupid… _"You can't just… You don't-" She felt worthless, rejected, like the finger of one moldering hand tossed into the corner of her bakehouse. "I don't know what you're playing at since-"

_Since you found me with Jack. _Clinging to the counter beside her, Nellie let out a strangled sob. _I've ruined it. I've lost him._

"Mrs. Lovett." Sweeney's voice was a growl. He came toward her, his face was unreadable behind her tears. _No…_

_No. _He wasn't hers to lose. She couldn't have…_No. It's not over. He's… He's just toying with me. _

She felt his cold fingers close around her wrist, realizing only after he held her still that she had been trembling. "Mrs. Lovett -" His breath seemed to stick, whatever words he meant to throw her out with not coming. She snatched her arms away, strangling a cry.

_Toying…_ Nellie felt her tears flow harder. "Not good enough for you, but too useful to give away, is that it?" Her voice was weak and wild, barely understandable. "Is that it?" His hands gripped her upper arms, angrily, desperately. She felt him barely shake her, as if he wasn't sure whether to pull her to him or push her away. Fighting to escape, she swept the bowl of hot soup off the counter to spatter across Sweeney's clean vest. She ran as soon as he let go.

XXXXXXX

"Mum!" Toby shouted as soon as he saw Mrs. Lovett leave the Tonsorial Parlor, his waving hands trying to snatch her attention. "Mrs. Lovett, ma'am! Help!"

"Yes! Help, ma'am!" Toby shoved back hard as the baker's "friend" Jack tried to stagger past him, laughing drunkenly as he mimicked the boy's cries. "Mum! Eleanor!" She didn't seem to hear either of them. Half turning, the boy snapped his dishrag at the Ripper before calling again. He ignored the slapping cloth, as he had since he had stumbled into the little courtyard. "E-e-eleano-o-o-r!"

Trying to wave, Jack nearly fell over before Toby took the opportunity to give him a shove. "Mrs. Lovett, mum! Hurry!" He flung himself at his enemy's feet. If nothing else, Toby was determined to keep Jack, who Toby guessed was too ghoulish to be any Jack but one, from getting to Mrs. Lovett.

"Get off me, you!" Jack kicked and thrashed about as he tried to free himself, but Toby clung to his scuffed old shoes. "I'll mail your entrails to your grandma! Off! Stop it!" One worn sole struck the boy's jaw clumsily, just hard enough to throw him off. He sat back, putting a hand to his jaw, as the Ripper managed to get to his feet unsteadily. _Bastard._

"Eleanor!" Out of the corner of his eye, Toby saw a stool fly past him to strike his unsteady opponent harmlessly on the shoulder. Jack had already ducked a second projectile before Toby saw the black skirts sweep furiously past him. He smiled as he backed away. It made him strangely happy to see his adoptive mother finally fighting back against the monsters of men she seemed to attract. Rushing around him, Nellie charged the Ripper as he tried to regain his balance after his dodge and, taking him by the collar, slapped him hard across the face. Toby stood, grinning.

Until he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping onto her white chest. _What?_

The jingle of little bells sounded out from the direction of the shops. Mrs. Lovett's face snapped toward their faint music, her hand raised still for another blow. Toby turned, too, bewildered. Mr. Todd looked uncertainly from the half-open door of his shop. For a moment it seemed as if he would come down to drive their unwelcome guest away. He turned back to the baker, feeling that for once he would be glad for their neighbor nearby. But her face, still fixed on the barber, was set with a strange new resolve.

Suddenly breaking the long stare, Mrs. Lovett's hovering hand flew to join the other at Jack's collar. With one last venomous glance at Sweeney Todd, at the man she loved, she dragged the stunned Ripper's face to hers and planted her lips on his.

XXXXXXX

_I think this is the nearest I've come so far to writing straight-up Sweenett. And then I killed it. Bwahaha! Everybody's taking a beating! Anyway, the next chapter will bring a return to our scheduled program of killing people and lauging about it. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and reviews make me very happy. :]_


	10. Chapter 10

**Kidney Pie – Chapter Ten**

XXXXXX

"You hit me!" Jack's voice, full of surprise, cut through the jangling bells as Mrs. Lovett dragged her two boys into the shop. Nellie shoved him into one of her booths, ignoring him.

"Are you all right, Toby?" The boy sat sullenly in the next booth over, still rubbing his jaw. She hardly glanced at him as she turned to the counter, trying to wipe her tears away while her back was turned.

"Yes, mum." The boy cast a bitter glance at the Ripper. "He didn't get me that hard."

Beside her stove, Mrs. Lovett look at her faint reflection in the side of a cooking pot. She looked like a ghost from some wretched nightmare, but at least her tears had stopped. She rubbed her face pointlessly, the lace of her fingerless gloves harsh on her damp skin, as she turned back to Toby. "I'm sorry, love. And you haven't even had your pies yet." Stooping, she pulled the pie, steaming and bubbling, from the stove. She dropped it onto a clean plate and brought it over to him. "There you are, dear." She stood back as he reached almost shyly for the pie, leaning against the chair opposite her helper. She suddenly felt so tired.

Looking wearily over the boy's head, she met Jack's blank, befuddled stare. "You… You…just…"

Resigned, she turned back to the stove. "Yeah, I know." She supposed it was too late to send the Ripper back to wherever the hell he came from. "Toby, why don't you take your pie and go in the other room? You've had a rough day, haven't you, lad?"

"Yes, mum." Rising, Toby looked sullenly at Jack before taking his plate and shuffling reluctantly off toward the parlor. He seemed to relax only when Nellie slipped a half-full bottle of gin into his hand as he passed. She listened, her eyes fixed on Jack, as Toby's footsteps rounded the corner and faded.

"You hit me!" More accusing now than astonished, Jack stared at her, his blue eyes blazing. Mrs. Lovett looked away, half hoping to go back to work and ignore the Ripper, but she felt her body sag as another wave of exhaustion swept over her, pushing her away from the thought of work. She sighed.

"Yes, Jack. I hit you." Firm but too tired to be argumentative, she gave him a look that dared him to bring it up again. "You're dangerous, you're a walking disaster, and you're drunk as a bloody sailor." She began ladling the rest of the soup into two bowls. "I don't know what you came for, anyway."

"Oh! Almost forgot!" Jack swayed dangerously as he stood, but managed to cross fairly safely to her counter. "I came to give you my heart." Grinning, he pulled from his vest a package wrapped in dirty newspaper. Nellie caught the heavy smell of blood and gin and the streets as Jack fumbled with the wrapping, spilling a heart onto her counter with a sticky slap.

She watched blankly as its congealed blood dropped in sticky gobs to her clean countertop. "That's not yours." She looked up at the Ripper, beaming foolishly back at her. "Probably stole it off some whore."

"Finders keepers, Eleanor."

Nellie smiled in spite of herself. "Go on, then." She handed him one of the bowls, leaving the heart where it lay as she walked around the end of the counter. "See if that sobers you up any." Taking the other bowl, she guided Jack lightly by the shoulder toward the booth. "You and I have one hell of a mess to clean up as soon as you can walk straight."

She collapsed into the seat opposite the Ripper, propping her head up on her black-gloved knuckles, watching Jack. She didn't do much more than toy with her own soup. She kept seeing the creamy broth spattering across Sweeney's vest. Her wry smile faded as she looked down at her bowl.

If she hadn't ruined it before, she must have now. She thought of the barber's white face in the dark of his doorway as…

When she had kissed Jack, it was with a hunger that had more to do with the man watching than with the man whose lips pressed back against hers. . But how would her cold, sullen Sweeney realize that?

She let out a giddy laugh even as tears blurred the shop around her. "You know what I've always wanted, Jack?" She watched her spoon herd the lumps of soft potato around her bowl. "All I wanted was a little place by the sea, just me and my man, and Toby. And a little seaside wedding… I could open a little guest house, and have friends over every Friday…" Her voice trailed off as she felt another rueful laugh welling up in her throat. "Sounds foolish, don't it?"

She absently wiped away the tears that had begun to roll again from her stinging eyes before looking up. Jack's daft blue eyes were fixed on hers, but wide and vacant. _Just like Mr. T._

Taking Jack's empty bowl, she brought their dishes to the sink and dropped them into the sudsy water. _It doesn't matter anyway._ She tried to imagine anything – the right words, the perfect action – to that would blot that one moment from Sweeney's memory. But there was none, and she knew it. She tried to imagine a future with Jack instead: a top hat left absentmindedly on their porch overlooking the beach; the occasional female body left bleeding in the tide, so badly mangled that the locals mistook her killer for a shark; keeping a constant watch to keep her kitchen knives out of the retired Ripper's idle hands. It didn't feel right. _Not that he cares anyway._

"Do you think there are many whores by the sea?" Startled, Mrs. Lovett turned to see Jack standing hesitantly at the end of her counter.

She half smiled. "I doubt it, love." Her smile widened. No, Jack would never do to replace her own Mr. Todd, not for the long run. But tonight… _Why bloody not? _He was better, at least, than a night alone to remember her sound rejection from Sweeney.

Smiling, she moved toward the Ripper, reaching out to take his hands in hers. A grin unrolled across his face as he stepped clumsily closer, understanding sparking in his mad eyes. "You kissed me." Silently, Nellie leaned in and kissed him again.

Jack smiled under her kiss as she released his hands to drape her arms over his shoulders. Fuzzy images danced around his gin-drowned mind – he was being kissed, he was being slapped, he was in an alley with a woman, his knife had blood on it. So many kisses haunted the foggy edges of his memory. Promising ones in the fog and rain and the greenish cast of gas lights. Hungry ones in shadowed courts and back alleys. He couldn't help smiling wider even as he returned her kiss, his right hand climbing carefully up her back to rest at the nape of her neck, trapping her head, her beautiful throat, close to him.

Mrs. Lovett's eyes snapped open when she felt something hard against her throat. _The knife!_ She threw herself back against his restraining hand, twisting her head away just as the blade nipped at her skin. Jack jumped, too, startling himself so badly that he nearly dropped the knife, letting her escape as he snatched at the spinning, falling blade. She scrambled back, clutching the shallow cut, until her back was against the wall. "Jack!"

"Sorry!" He set the knife down clattering on the counter. "Sorry, sweetheart." He stepped toward her, almost falling, his hands spread and empty. "I forgot…" He reached into his pockets and drew out a red handkerchief, rolling it clumsily into a makeshift scarf. "There." He held it out as he ambled closer, reaching out to wrap it carefully around her bleeding throat and tie it at the side. "It's all right now. I forgot you're the one I'm not supposed to kill yet." He smiled at her. "That looks pretty on you, don't it, love?"

She stared at him, trying to steady her breathing. Grinning like a madman, Jack lurched to the side, nearly stumbling. Nellie took the opportunity to grab him by the collar and shove him face first into the sink.

Pinning her flailing guest in the cold suds, Mrs. Lovett took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. Only when she felt her heart stop pounding did the release the Ripper, who staggered backward as he stood, gasping. Soap bubbles blinked and burst in his unruly hair as he started at her, wide-eyed and blinking. "Feel any better, love?" He blinked again, stunned. "That's alright. Come on. We've got a bakehouse to clean."

-"A Paragon of Integrity"-

Beadle Bamford looked up as the doorbell rang distantly through the spaces of his home, but snapped his attention back to his book. It wouldn't do to seem too eager. A gentleman always has better things to do, although the beadle, being a noble figure, would always spare a moment for his friends and neighbors. Casing another glance toward the door, he shifted his bulky body in his finest armchair, trying –and failing –to find a position that was both casual and elegant.

He paused, listening for footsteps outside his sitting room door. None came. Quickly, he double checked the cover of the book he had borrowed from Judge Turpin for a title to give it away. It was all unmarked leather, looking every inch a gentleman's well-worn book. Holding it carefully so that his visitor wouldn't be able to glimpse the pages, he pretended once again to be absorbed in his reading.

Finally, he heard footsteps in the thickly carpeted hall and his maid's voice indistinct behind the thick oak door. He forced himself not to look up until he heard the door swing open.

"A Robert to see you, Mr. Bamford." He feigned surprise as Annie led in his visitor, the ragged boy the post office sometimes sent on errands. He made sure his disappointment didn't show.

"Ah, yes." He snapped the book shut and laid it down with a carelessness he had spent hours perfecting and rose to meet the little urchin. _Remember, William: friends and neighbors._ "What brings you here, lad?"

"Well, sir…" The boy glanced nervously around the room, looking suspiciously as if he were planning an escape route. "You was saying and all how you was going to be in on the Ripper case down in Fleet Street, and we all thought you ought to know right away what this came through the post today." Beadle Bamford stepped almost reluctantly forward as the boy pulled from the pocket of his patched coat a crumpled envelope.

The beadle took it gingerly, suddenly rethinking his involvement in the investigation as he read his own name and address in scrawling red script. If he was going to be receiving notes like the officials in Whitechapel, he should have _at least _gotten a little show of appreciation from the ladies of the area. In hindsight, he supposed he should have paid a visit to the pie shop. With the murder all but on her doorstep and… Well, no wonder if the Ripper ever mistook her for a whore herself, perhaps Mrs. Lovett would have given him a bit of gratitude. With a growing sense of dread, he opened the letter, releasing the scent of fog and cheap gin, and read the letter inside.

_**From Hell,**_

_**Beadle Bamford,**_

_**Sir,**_

_**I've seen you poking your fat greasy mug into my work and I don't like it. Don't you tell yourself that you're the one to catch me 'cos you ain't. The whole Whitechapel force can't bring me in. Fleet Street is just the same – **__**easy pickings!**__** If I find you nosing after me again, I'll have your guts stung on the streetlights by morning.**_

_**I am not joking, boss. **__**I will cut you!!!**_

_**Try if you like, Mishter Bamford.**_

_**Jack the Ripper**_

_**PS – Don't think I'm finished, here or in Whitechapel. You will never be rid of me! Ha ha ha.**_

_**PPS – Don't expect any tidbits from me, either. I'm not sharing my supper with a porker like you. **_

Robert glanced around the room as Bamford lowered the shaking page to look at him. The rumors about his host and his possible uses for small boys ran through his head.

The beadle, however had other concerns, such as having the boy escorted out before he could notice the stain spreading across the front of the unfortunate official's trousers.

XXXXXXX

Sweeney stood with his foot on the lever of his mechanical chair and a silver razor, open and glowing in the icy moonlight, in each hand, listening to the sounds that echoed up through the shaft to the bakehouse.

The faint splashing of a mop and bucket, the dragging and hacking as the day's customers were butchered to feed tomorrow's, even Nellie's voice floating up in indistinct snatches, were familiar sounds. He heard them every night, reminding him that down below, Nellie was working. But behind them came the sound of another, lower voice humming tunelessly, drunkenly. It wouldn't let him forget who else was in the cellar, made him wonder whether each new sound was made by the baker or her new friend.

A muffled splash sounded out on the bricks below. "Watch where you're mopping, love," Mrs. Lovett's voice said. "Them boots are new." Sweeney scowled at the faint chuckle that followed. Gripping his razors tighter, he let the trap door swing back into line with the floor as he turned to pace the shop. _Damn her!_

The barber was no stranger to hatred and rage; he spent every day seething in them. He could never recall, though, feeling such jealousy as he had that night. His jaws clenched as he tried to push away the memory of Nellie – _his _Nellie – dragging Jack the Ripper into a kiss. His pace grew faster and faster, trying to fill the dark with the thunder of his footsteps and drive away the thought, but his fury grew the more he tried to ignore its cause.

The next day would be a bad one for a shave.

XXXXXXX

_Not that there's really a_ good _day for a shave..._

_Reviews are my life. :D_


	11. Chapter 11

**Kidney Pie – Chapter 11**

XXXXXXX

"Urgh…" Jack shifted half-out of sleep, his head pounding. _What the hell…? _Groaning, he buried his face in his pillow, only to realize that it – whatever it was – was too scratchy to be his pillow at all. Neither was the large thing he realized he was hugging to his chest soft enough to be a pillow_. I'm not in my bed._

He swore silently, trying to remember the night before. He had been going to mail his letter. He had stopped at the Ten Bells. He could remember nothing else. _Just bloody perfect. _Even if he had pulled off another job, he would have expected to find himself back in his own room. Unwilling to open his eyes yet, he felt for the object he had been clinging to senselessly in his sleep. It lay across his arm, curved and covered in a stiff cloth. _A body?_ His hands crept higher. _A _woman's _body._ And yet strangely intact. He opened his eyes to a mass of reddish curls. _Eleanor! _

Quickly pulling his arms away, Jack scrambled back, sitting up so suddenly that his spinning head almost made him drop back onto the mattress. Beneath the tacky quilt that had covered them both, Mrs. Lovett wore her dress from the day before, only her corset missing. He looked down at himself, discovering that the nearest he had come to getting undressed was losing his right shoe. _Damn._

Very carefully, the Ripper leaned closer to Nellie. She lay still, not stirring when he had dragged his arm out from underneath her. A note a fear touched his heart as he looked at her. Around her throat, she wore his red handkerchief. Had he strangled her? Or cut her throat and let her bleed to death without so much as another cut? His horror grew as it occurred to him that he could have murdered the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen and not even remembered it. What a waste that would be! He reached out to touch her arm, shaking it her lightly. "Eleanor?"

"Mmph?" He relaxed as the baker shifted in her sleep, stretching in place like a cat. "Don't go nowhere, Mr. Todd. That seagull wants to eat your buttons…" Jack scowled at his rival's name. _Maybe I should've ripped her after all. _With his headache, though, he settled for pulling the quilt slowly up to her chin and crawling carefully off her bed.

A heavy fog had spread itself over Fleet Street during the night, prowling in white wisps beneath a miserable drizzle. It made Jack feel quite at home in the pre-dawn silence of the pie shop when he quietly made his way to the kitchen. Smiling groggily, he laid his lean face against the cold glass of the window frame. This weather, the thick, strangling mist of London, was like an old friend to him. He waited, watching wings and ghosts shift through the cloudy street, until he felt better. Stepping back, he rubbed the last sandy sleep from his eyes. The cold window had helped his head, but it could do little for the sense of tragically lost opportunities. _What a bloody waste._

Cursing gin under his breath, he drifted, stretching, into the little parlor. The chill of the morning was just starting to cut through the heat of the dying fire, making the little boy asleep on the worn couch muffle his snores under the heavy blanket pulled over his head. Last time, Jack had slept here in the arm chair. _How'd I get into her bed? _He tried to think of what he'd done as he tiptoed across the room to find his coat and top hat where he'd been forced to abandon them on his last disastrous visit. His knife was missing from its pocket. He stared for a moment at the black cloth, thinking. _I had it with me. _He stared as the broken memories tried to piece themselves together again. _Yes. I must have._

He turned back for the kitchen, his one shoe giving him a frustrating shuffling gait. Standing in the center of the dark room, he scanned the shadows, his mad eyes darting. A dark lump lay on the counter, giving up the familiar, coppery scent of blood. Stepping towards it, he ran an expert hand over the object. A heart. _Did I bring that? _He licked the sticky gore absently from his fingertips, remembering vaguely fog and bells and cheap perfume. _It's fresh, anyway._ He wondered if that was why Eleanor had let him share her bed. _Maybe she only loves men who bring her meat._

Wandering farther, he spotted a gleam at the end of the counter and found his knife, its edge coated with a clinging film of blood. He reached for his handkerchief to wipe it clean before he remembered seeing it around Mrs. Lovett's neck. That puzzle, suddenly, he wasn't sure he wanted to understand.

He found his missing shoe wedged in the heavy bakehouse door. He supposed he had closed it on his foot. Hesitating only a moment, he pulled it open wide and sat on the top step to put it back on. The stench from the cellar below was almost overpowering. Perhaps he and Todd had helped the stink by spreading the piles of bits and pieces. _Or maybe last night… _He stepped carefully down the stairs, ready for the most horrific scene but totally unprepared for what he saw.

The bakehouse was clean.

The heaps of rotting flesh had vanished. Any corpses that had been waiting were already reduced to unidentifiable meat. The smell, upon further investigation, came only from the oven, whose door hung open to reveal a thick bed of oily black soot and bits of charred bone. _Bloody hell…_ He had found a heaven, and then helped the baker destroy it.

XXXXXXX

_What is that stink? _Mrs. Lovett was used to the smell of death that always rose from the bakehouse, but usually it wasn't so strong upstairs. The heavy bakehouse door blocked the worst of it, as long as all her doors and windows were shut against the reeking smoke her chimney poured into Fleet Street. Even when they had burned the mangled and rotting meat left in the cellar, the shop and the baker's little rooms behind it had been livable, if far from sweet-smelling. But now, a thin smoke crept through the air, stinging her sleepy senses with the smell of burning flesh. _What the hell…? _She opened her eyes. The little clock on her nightstand read 6:13. Hadn't she put out the oven downstairs properly? Or had Toby or Jack-

She groaned. _Or Jack's done something foolish. _She sat up, swinging her bare feet out of the bed, and eased her weight slowly onto her aching limbs. _If he's caught my bloody house on fire… _As she stumbled sleepily down the hall, she could see the smoke coming in white wisps from the kitchen and hear the sizzle of cooking meat and the clack of dishes. Behind the walls, Jack sang under his breath,

"_Only a violet I plucked when but a boy_

_And oft times when I'm sad at heart this flower has given me joy._

_So, while life does remain in memorial I'll retain_

_This small violet I plucked from mother's grave…"_

She hesitated as she rounded the corner to the kitchen, her slow steps silent without her boots. When she caught his eye, Jack jumped and in his surprise dropped a cup of what appeared to be tea. "Eleanor!"

"What the hell are you up to?"

Behind the counter, Jack picked up and refilled the tea cup, setting it down with a sharp click on her counter. "I'm making you breakfast."

"What?" Nellie stared, dumbfounded.

The light in the blue eyes that met hers was less feverish than usual, perhaps due to the aftereffects of all that gin. Or maybe he was just saner in the morning. _Although, from the smell of breakfast… _"Breakfast. For you." He turned to the stove, and Nellie saw the rim of her skillet as he shook something out onto a plate. Her nose crinkling, she stepped closer to the counter, craning her neck to see over the counter. The Ripper stopped her with a glance. "Sit."

She watched him warily as she backed toward one of her own booths and sat, her curiosity overpowering for the moment her instinct that allowing Jack the Ripper to cook for her was a bad idea. Jack smiled, watching her drop into the seat. "You know, I thought for a second I killed you this morning. And I couldn't even remember."

"Well, I'm awful glad you didn't, love."

"Me, too. I don't suppose I'll get to kill many women as lovely as you." His grin spread as he picked up one of her trays. "I'd want to do it so as to remember it the rest of my life."

Nellie edged further into the booth. "How sweet." As soon as he set it in front of her, the source of the smell was obvious; along with a cup of dark tea and blackened toast, her breakfast consisted of what appeared to be the burned, greasy pieces of the heart he had brought her the night before. "Oh, that's nice, love. Shame I'm not hungry just yet. Too bad. Looks delicious, though."

Jack blinked owlishly at her, sitting down across the little table. "You're not hungry?"

"Not yet, love. Had a big supper last night."

"You did not!"

"Do you even remember last night?" Jack scowled at the tabletop, and she knew he didn't. He had been in such a state… She giggled at the memory of the Ripper sitting half-conscious in her bed, his attention captivated by the movement of his sock as he wiggled his toes. She had smiled at him as she undid her corset; he grinned back, not quite understanding, before his eyes closed and he slumped over, already asleep. He gave her a sullen look as her giggle burst into an honest laugh. "Why don't you have it, love." She pushed the tray closer to him. "And I'll fix up something for Toby and Mr. T."

Sighing, Jack started to nibble on a chunk of scorched flesh, his mad eyes catching her as she stood. "We cleaned the bakehouse." He spoke as somberly as if he was informing her of a death.

She stifled another fit of laughter as she slid out of the booth. "Don't worry, Jack. We'll make a whole new mess down there before long."

-"A Pious Vulture of the Law"-

Judge Turpin was looking out the window of the Old Bailey when the beadle's carriage arrived. He had never seen the pudgy little sycophant move so fast in his life. Turpin watched as his assistant darted from the coach's opening door and scurried toward the grim stone building. It was a display completely without dignity. Almost rodent-like. He grunted in dismissal, shifting his gaze to a passing woman and trying to peer down her disappointingly high neckline.

He drew the shades, withdrawing into his dark office to brood. On his desk still sat the framed photograph of Johanna, looking stiff and sad in her fine brocade dress like a young corpse. He sighed, wondering how she was faring in Fogg's Asylum. His poor Johanna. Maybe as she tried to steal snatches of uneasy sleep in some damp corner, as she listened to the screams of the other unfortunate girls, she was thinking of him.

A sense of grief flooded his tired old heart. It saddened him to have to put his poor, young, beautiful Johanna through such an ordeal, but nobody refused the great Judge Turpin. He _did_ have a reputation to uphold.

He stared morosely at the papers on his desk, sighing when he heard the beadle's unmistakably heavy footsteps outside his door. He sneered, knowing that next would come the playful knock, then the attempt at a witty greeting, the bawdy wink, the sleazy swagger as his underling made his inevitable entrance. Today, though, he burst unceremoniously into the room, turning to glance up and down the hallway before he shut and bolted the door behind him. Turpin stared, scowling. The beadle forced a smile as he caught his breath. "Good... morning… my lord…"

"Any particular cause for this hurry?" Picking one the day's newspaper, he didn't wait for Bamford's reply. He really didn't care, unless that same fright could drive him away just as quickly.

"Oh, no…" Turpin scowled again as the other man crossed the room uninvited to stand far too close as he peered through the window nervously. The judge cleared his throat loudly, settling back to his reading as the beadle moved away, and raised the rustling pages like a newsprint barricade between them.

He smiled at the effect, ignoring his visitor's conversation to focus on the headline before him. _**"MORE THAN THE RIPPER AT WORK IN FLEET STREET," **_the bold words announced. _**"Police seeking connection between recent Ripper murder and string of disappearances in area of St. Dunstan's ." **_He scanned the rest of the report lazily until his eye came to rest on a single sentence, "_Police say 173 persons have been reported missing after being last seen in Fleet Street, and some sources speculate that the number dead may be significantly higher."_

He slowly lowered the paper, staring as if watching his own memories. "Isn't it strange how so much happens on that particular street?" He glanced again at the portrait of Johanna. _Even then… _It was as if the place was cursed. Or haunted…

"What?" Bamford looked up, useless. The judge continued to ignore him, thinking aloud. There had to be a more practical explanation.

"A sailor." Satisfied with the idea, Turpin stood to round the desk with an almost predatory pace. "Sailors are known as Jacks, are they not?"

"What, do you mean the Ripper?" A note of fear crept into the beadle's voice. "I – I think he's probably best left alone, on second thought. I mean, a few whores-"

"A _sailor,_ my friend." Turpin was leaning close now, triumph giving his eyes a strange light. "We know a sailor with connections in Fleet Street. Don't we?"

"The sailor boy?" Beadle Bamford looked as though he might be sick. "_Johanna's _sailor boy?" His eyes went wide and scared at the thought that the thin, almost girlish youth that had writhed beneath his cane was the psychopath that now stalked London.

Turpin grabbed his arm, squeezing so hard that the beadle squealed beneath his grip. "_Not _Johanna's! She's mine." The judge let go, turning away to pace the dreary office. "The sailor gives us Jack. As for the killer's medical experience, perhaps a barber surgeon. There's your Ripper." He looked back at his quivering lackey. "What do you think?"

Bamford stared at him, wide eyed and slack jawed, trembling. Sweeney Todd's words echoed in his mind - _"And I'll be sure to give you, without a penny's charge, the closest shave you will ever know…" _

The judge turned back to the window, drawing aside the dirty blinds to look out into the street below. "You and I will have to arrange another visit to our dear Mr. Todd."

Behind him, he heard his henchman's heavy steps lumbering out of the room and the unmistakable sound of gagging as the door swung open and crashed shut.

-"That's the Throat to Slit"-

Sweeney Todd barely noticed the blood that dripped from his walls, his window, even his own shirtsleeves as he all but beat the floor with his mop. Each sweep of the red-stained, sodden strands lashed at the boards as if the barber wanted to scour his way through the wood and into the pie shop below. His jaws clenched as he worked. His arms almost shook with rage. His head hurt.

He simply could not rid himself of the image of Mrs. Lovett kissing Jack the Ripper.

Snarling, he slammed the mop back into the bucket, water sloshing across the floor as the pail almost tipped over. _Damn the both of them! _The floor was only half clean, but he shoved the mop and bucket aside to pace, raging, through the rusty-colored puddles.

His precious razor, the only thing so far that he had managed to keep clean properly, flashed angrily as he held it up, swinging at nothing. _Let him have her,_ it whispered, fierce. _Let him have as much of her as he won't send back through the mail. _He cursed, nearly flinging the blade away but unable to release it.

The anger that drove him faltered, and the barber let himself collapse into his deadly chair, his empty hand snatching at his hair. _What the hell have I done? _The razor closed, seeming to sink as his raised hand slowly lowered. She had been right there, with love in her eyes. She came to him. All he had to do was to say those three words, to say nothing, even, and taken her hand to show her in silence. _I drove her straight into his arms._

Leaping out of the chair, Sweeney let out an animal yell of hatred and grief as he turned to his window. He leaned against the sill, the fingers of his right hand pressed between the bloody wood and the razor's engraved handle. He'd find a way. He'd think of something. It wasn't too late. His mind churned, trying to plan. _"Sing her a love song…Just look at her all the time… Just try and show her how much you care…"_ He saw his reflection in the window twist into some hellish, furious mask. _Anthony better not come charging in before I find a way to --_

His thoughts were interrupted by familiar frantic footsteps racing up the stairs to his shop and a crash at his bolted door. "Mr. Todd!" The door shook on its hinges as the sailor struggled desperately to open it. "Mr. Todd, are you there!?" Flicking his razor open, Sweeney darted to the door and flung back the bolt. "Mr. Todd, I've found--" Anthony's words were cut off as the barber ripped the door open and grabbed the boy by the collar, dragging him into the shop.

XXXXXX

"Shouldn't he wake up soon?" The man's voice floated somewhere in the dark above Anthony's stinging, throbbing head.

"You didn't exactly help him any, love," a woman answered. "You didn't have to hit him that hard."

"He was squealing like a half-cut whore! I hate bloody screamers."

"Be quiet, Jack." The woman's voice was harsh and flat, but oddly musical. _I know that voice… _"See, he is waking up."

Stirring, Anthony lifted a clumsy hand to his burning face, feeling cool wet cloths pressed over what felt like one deep gash running from his right temple to his jaw line. He opened his eyes. Mrs. Lovett was indeed standing over him, along with a mad-looking creature in a top hat. "What…"

"Dropped through the chair, eh, lad?" The man winked at him, leaning closer with a horrific grin, but the baker drove her elbow into his ribs.

She laughed awkwardly. "These Whitechapel folk and their rhyming slang… He means you fell down the stairs." The two exchanged a look. "The stairs to Mr. Todd's shop. Fell halfway down, you did. Have to be more careful when you go running about."

"Oh…" Anthony looked up, trying to focus in their white faces instead of the dizzying blur of the Mrs. Lovett's bright wallpaper. "How did…" He gingerly prodded at the damp rags, feeling the split in his skin beneath them.

"You got caught on a bit of nail sticking out. Nasty thing, wasn't it, Jack?" Blinking as if caught off guard, the man hesitated before nodding vigorously. "Not so bad as those dreams you were having, though. You kept screaming about Mr. Todd trying to kill you. Isn't that silly?"

Jack tried and failed to stifle a snickering laugh. Mrs. Lovett stomped on his foot. "That's a very silly thing to dream of."

Anthony remembered hazily seeing the barber standing over him, razor in hand. "Yes, that's quite foolish." He closed his eyes, head pounding. "I'm sorry to cause you so much trouble."

"No trouble at all, dearie." He heard footsteps drifting away to his other side as the baker stooped to collect the rags he had bloodied. "Now, what was it you wanted Mr. T for anyway?"

"Oh!" Remembering, the sailor sat up too fast, losing the room around him in sudden blooms of light. He murmured his thanks, wincing, as the Ripper pushed him back down onto Mrs. Lovett's couch. "I found Johanna! She's locked in a madhouse – Fogg's Asylum – but there's no way in. I have to get Mr. Todd to help me!"

"I think you better stay here, love. I'll let him know." He watched her head of frizzy red curls draw out of his sight, suddenly feeling dizzy again.

"Ma'am!?"

"What?" She didn't come back, but he could hear that she had stopped.

"Did he tell you?"

"Tell me what, love?" Anthony would have answered, but couldn't quite find his voice. She turned, skirts rustling. "Jack, you keep an eye on him." He heard her steps grow farther and farther away, the sounds seeming strangely thin and tinny. He looked up into the stranger's leering smile, and then promptly passed out.

-"…All resolved with a single stroke…"-

Sweeney was just finishing with the floor, again, when he heard her enter the shop behind him. Even without her chatter, he could sense it was her. His heart gave a painful twist, but he refused to turn and face her. "Did the fall kill him?"

"Are you out of your bloody mind?" She took a step closer. He dropped the mop head noisily in the bucket, ignoring her. She took another step. "Mr. T, he was coming to tell you about Johanna."

_Johanna…_The mop fell. Slowly, moving as stiffly as a toy soldier, he turned to face her, his eyes wide. "Glad you missed his throat now? She's in a madhouse. He was coming to tell you." Her eyes searched his, so much softer, even now, than he had expected. "Mr. Todd, what's happening to you?"

_You._ He stared at her without seeing her, his thoughts running in too many directions at once. _My little Johanna… _If he had Johanna he could get to the Judge.

"Mr. Todd?" Mrs. Lovett stepped nearer, watching him, almost overcome by his hopelessness in spite of everything.

Johanna was in a madhouse…

"Can you hear me?" Closer still, Nellie could have reached out to touch him.

And Mrs. Lovett was with…

She scarcely even gave breath to the whisper, "Sweeney…?" Drawn in that last step, the baker lifted her hands, longing to touch him but afraid to.

A madman.

Sweeney broke into a grin, snatching up his startled landlady so suddenly that she squealed in surprise, and swept her through an unexpected dance. They reached the door, and Sweeney let go of her hand. With one arm around her waist, he half led and half dragged the baker down and into her own shop, ignoring her protests.

Jack had heard the noise. As Sweeney barged into the kitchen, he found the Ripper waiting, wary, in the doorway to the parlor. "What's going on!?"

Releasing Mrs. Lovett, Mr. Todd stepped up to his rival, grinning as he clapped his hands on the Ripper's shoulders. "Nothing to worry about, Jack. We're going to have you committed."

XXXXXXX

_The song Jack sings in the kitchen is the one that one of his victims, Mary Kelly, was heard singing shortly before her death. Must've gotten stuck in his head._

_Also -- If you're enjoying this story and would like a little more fun involving serial murder and Jack the Ripper's love life, I strongly recommend you visit star-the-ripper dot deviantart dot com and check out her story, "The Mystery of Jack the Ripper." It is a bloody good piece of work, and just gets better with every chapter. I think you'll be able to spot a good deal of Sweeney's influence, although he never makes an appearance._

_Thank you to everybody who reviewed. :D_


	12. Chapter 12

**Kidney Pie – Chapter 12**

-"I Am Not Mad"-

The night was uncharacteristically clear, and the moon shone down eerily on Fogg's Asylum. Nellie couldn't help comparing the large, square, rather ugly stone building to a prison or a medieval fortress. She shivered as she looked at it through the black iron bars of its looming fence.

"Tell me again what the plan is?" She felt Jack move closer even as he spoke. The makeshift manacles – only a strip of an old sheet, really – he had agreed to be bound with pulled tight around her arm as his fingers dug nervously into her shoulder. She was suddenly glad that she wasn't the one about to play the patient. _Poor thing…_

The baker jumped, surprised, as Mr. Todd stepped closer on her other side, the leather of his coat brushing her elbow. "We bring you to Fogg. He looks at you. I ask to see the hospital. I get Johanna. We leave."

"And by the time he realizes I'm not mad, you'll have the girl?"

Mrs. Lovett cast the Ripper a pitying glance. "Something like that, love." There was a moment of silence as the three stared at the blocky hospital.

"Do we kill Johanna?"

"_No!" _She and Mr. Todd answered together, turning to their companion. Sweeney's hand closed viciously around hers, and Nellie was thankful she was standing between the two killers.

Oblivious, Jack still looked wide-eyed at the asylum. "Oh." The barber's grip relaxed, but his fingers lingered on hers. She turned to look at him. To her surprise, her eyes met his. She forgot for that moment about their mission, lost in that stare until he stepped away, drawing her by the hand toward the heavy gate. With the Ripper still clutching her other arm, Mrs. Lovett stepped slowly to the asylum, flanked by the two fiends.

Inside, they were ushered quickly into a dingy office to wait for Mr. Fogg. Its desk was cluttered with books and records, its walls bare, and the whole room was filled by the sharp smell of chloroform. Nellie glanced around, noticing the threadbare chairs behind them but preferring somehow to stand. Sweeney leaned close to her ear. "You remember the story?"

"Violent fits. Out late at night. We're very worried." He had released her hand, but she reached out to lightly touch his wrist, feeling a kind of electricity as she did, a tingle that seemed to lift her tired body. Absurdly, she thought of the stories about new treatments being used on mental patients, ones that left them writhing as sparks surged through their poor scattered brains. She shuddered, glancing again at Jack, who hung behind her like a lost puppy. "We'd just like Mr. Fogg to take a look at him."

"Look at who?" All three faces snapped toward the door, where a tall, ferrety man in a grimy white coat was just slipping into the office. Dark, beady eyes flicked over their little party. _Any one of us must look half out of our minds._ "Sorry. Dr. Jonas Fogg. How can I help you?"

Mrs. Lovett took a deep breath as he stepped away from her men, reaching out for Fogg's hand. "Thank you, Mr. Fogg. We just hoped you might have a little look at someone for us." The doctor's eyes ran again to the two she had left behind her. The Ripper waved shyly, the frayed cloth pulled taut between his hands. "Come on, Jack. It's alright."

Fogg glanced at Sweeney before giving Jack a smile. "Certainly. If you'll have a seat, please…" He gestured toward a badly stained wooden counter against the opposite wall. Toying with his bindings, Jacked edged over to it reluctantly, his eyes still fixed on the others as he hopped onto its surface. "Now, if I may ask, ma'am, how do you know the gentleman."

"Oh, he's my brother, he i-"

"In law." Both Jack and Nellie stared wide-eyed at the barber, confused, but Sweeney continued. "My brother. Her brother-in-law." Nellie's heart raced as it dawned on her what he had just implied. _But a seaside wedding could be devised, my rumpled bedding legitimized…_ "We're married."

"No! No, they're not!" Glaring, Jack pointed accusingly at the two from his perch on Fogg's counter. "They are _not_ married."

Sweeney stepped towards the doctor, twining the baker's arm around his. "You see, sir, how delusional he is." He smiled, turning to cast another look at the speechless Ripper. "We just want our poor brother back in his right mind." Scowling, Jack wound the loose cloth around his hands, jerking the remaining slack so that the fabric made a sharp cracking sound.

Fogg looked up at the sound, but turned back to Sweeney. "Of course."

"You'll understand, though, that I couldn't possibly leave my -" Sweeney cast a sideways glance at Jack. "-_dear_ brother in a hospital I knew nothing about."

Another snap sounded out behind them, but Mrs. Lovett hardly heard it. Her attention was fixed solely on Mr. Todd as he talked his way into a tour of the hospital. The silky, commanding cunning he had suddenly mustered gave her chills. It was so unlike the brutality she often saw in him, unlike Benjamin Barker's unassuming innocence. She wondered if he had learned to lie in prison before he talked his way past the guards and walked into freedom.

"Yes, sir, I agree," Fogg was saying. Nellie snapped out of her dreaming as the doctor turned and leaned out his office door, calling out to someone in the hall. She looked around her quickly. Sweeney met her eyes, smiling at her the way he had when she had first suggested their little enterprise to him. She felt her heart turn to sand and poor down into the pit of her belly, even as Fogg swung the door open, showing a balding orderly on the other side. "Samuel here will be more than happy to show you around."

"Thank you, sir." Mr. Todd watched Nellie as he stepped toward the door, still smiling. "I'm sure Nellie will give you all the help you need with Jack. She's quite fond of my brother." Whatever bond had tied her senses only to him broke as soon as the door swung quietly shut behind the barber. The only bond left in the room was the strip of cloth that ran between Jack's wrists. He snapped it again, angry, as she turned to face him, her smile only weakly meeting the jealousy blazing in the Ripper's glare.

XXXXXXX

"Wake him up." Beadle Bamford jumped as Turpin's voice cut through the dark inside the carriage. The judge's private coach stood in the shadows of Fleet Street, its one curtained window allowing them to watch the dark close around the deserted pie shop and looming peak of Sweeney Todd's Tonsorial Parlor, its massive window gleaming dimly in the moonlight. There wasn't a soul to be seen in the road, but they waited still, as the stench that always hung over the area seeped into the carriage's perfumed interior.

At least it masked the smell of opium. The beadle turned hesitantly to the third man, slumped and snoring on the seat beside him. "Are you _sure_, my lord? Maybe we should let it run its course…"

"_Wake him up!" _The judge all but snarled. Even though the darkness hid his face, his fury was unmistakable. "Or would you like to wait her until they return and conduct our search with the Ripper at home?"

Bamford grabbed the man by the lapels, shaking him like a rag. "Inspector! Wake up at once!"

Inspector Frederick Abberline opened his unfocused eyes with a groan. "Wha's it, Godley?"

"Sergeant Godley is downing ale in the same Whitechapel pub where he told us how to find you." The judge sat stiffly in his seat, his voice sour with contempt. "Honestly, Inspector, if you conduct your investigations in this state, it's hardly a surprise that we have solved the Ripper case before you."

"Actually, that's where you're wrong." Sitting up unsteadily, Abberline waved a clumsy hand in the judge's direction. "I know exactly who the Ripper is. I just can't prove it yet. You see the Freemasons have-"

"I don't care." Beadle Bamford jumped in his seat as Turpin lunged through the gloom at the detective. "We are outside the home of one of the two men I am certain are behind the murders. You are going to help us link this man to the murders in Whitechapel. Is that clear, Inspector?" Abberline only blinked sleepily before the judge threw him back against the padded walls of the coach. "Get him moving! We'll search the barber's shop first."

The moonlight leapt into the carriage as Turpin flung the door open and stepped out. The beadle felt his knees go so loose he wasn't sure he could follow. "But, your honor…" Ignoring his underling, his honor swept angrily into the street and towards Mrs. Lovett's empty yard. "Perhaps the Inspector and I should stay here and keep watch."

The judge gave him a look of disgust. "Bring. Him. Now." Bamford's heart pounded as he scrambled out of the coach, dragging the half-conscious detective behind him. Turpin was crossing the courtyard already, striding past the empty rows of stools with such a fury that the sleeping birds in cages strung overhead began to chirp and flutter in surprise. The beadle staggered after him, struggling to keep Abberline upright. Afraid to call, he hurried after the judge.

Turpin was halfway up the rickety steps when they reached the foot of the stair, but Beadle Bamford could force himself to climb up after him. He felt the inspector slide from his shaking arms to teeter on his own feet and then fall. "M-maybe I sh-should stay with A-a-abberline, in c-case-"

Judge Turpin turned to glare at him. In the moonlight, Bamford saw a fury in his eyes that had little to do with Jack the Ripper and everything to do with Sweeney Todd and the sailor, with Johanna, even with the woman who had poisoned herself in that very shop fifteen years ago. Turpin started up again with a snarl. Even as frightened tears started form in his eyes, the beadle clutched the railing and followed his master.

XXXXXXX

"These rooms here, they're for holding the ones what need to be by themselves." Sweeney stopped in the badly lit hallway as the orderly stopped beside a row of heavily barred cells. Feigning interest, he stepped closer, peering through the nearest padlocked door. The dark on the other side was hopelessly thick, but the rancid smell of blood and filth painted a clear enough picture. He staggered back, reminded distantly of the dark, reeking hold of his prison ship years ago. "You alright, gov?"

Sweeney steadied himself, forcing a faint smile. "Yes."

Samuel, looking back at him, was obviously concerned. "They ain't in there long, you see. Or we'd clean 'em better." He spoke with a tense, forced calm, as if the barber was one of Fogg's unfortunate patients. Mr. Todd's smile grew wider. "We don't take bad care of 'em."

"Of course. I'm sure in your line you're unable to give your patients the proper care all the time." Sweeney stepped casually up to the bars, looking dismissively again into the black, empty cell. "What I'm most interested in is the regular quarters. You'll show me, won't you?"

Samuel smiled back, relieved. "Course I will, sir. Now – Just this way, sir." The lights flickered in the hallway as they moved on, making shadows leap around the bars and heavy iron doors. "Here-" The orderly flung out his arm toward another locked door as they passed. "That's where the doctor works on 'em." There was no explanation, but Mr. Todd eyed the door, remembering stories. Too many of the men he had known were ones who had been shuffled from prison to madhouse and finally to anywhere but England. The ones no one knew what to do with. He imagined the devices of helping horror behind the door, smiling in the gloom. _Jack should do excellently in that particular level of society. _

They didn't stop. Nor did his guide stop talking. Sweeney, though, had stopped listening. He pictured Mrs. Lovett's devastated expression when the Ripper failed to make his escape from the Asylum. He pictured her tears, the pie shop closed. He pictured himself coming down to comfort her, giving her Johanna to be a daughter, a sister to Toby. They'd be a perfect family, the four of them. _His _family.

"Here we are." Pausing at a chained, rusted gate, Samuel drew out a set of keys. "Men on this side of the hall, women on the other." The bars swung with a creak into the darkness on the other side. "It's your brother gone daft, ain't it?" There was a pause as they stepped into another long hallway, lined by more doors, all barred, locked, and bolted. "You know, gov? It's a hard thing for a man to take, having madness in the family, but you take it better than most."

Sweeney reached instinctively for his razor, his fingers finding the cold silver peeking from its holster. He grinned. "I have every confidence, sir, that it'll all end well."

XXXXXXX

_Electroshock therapy was not in use until the 1930's, so that part is historically impossible. But then, Jack the Ripper was at work in 1888, 86 years after Sweeney Todd was supposedly hung or 42 years after the musical is set, so..._

_Fun fact: "I am not mad" is from one of the lesser known Ripper letters, in which Jack complains about the newspapers calling him crazy. He also claimed not to "smoke, swill, nor touch gin." So much for that._

_And once again, I strongly encourage everybody to check out "The Mystery of Jack the Ripper" by Star the Ripper on DeviantArt. That's star-the-ripper dot deviantart dot com, and it's right in her gallery. It's a great story and she's a great friend of mine._

_Thanks again to everybody who reviewed!_


	13. Chapter 13

**Kidney Pie – Chapter 13**

XXXXXXX

Sitting on the stained wooden counter, Jack hunched over his crossed arms, scowling sideways at Mr. Fogg. The doctor leaned over beside him, speaking calmly as he lit a candle. "We'll have lot of fun now, won't we? Just you and me and your lovely sister." Jack shot an angry glance at Mrs. Lovett, who smiled back uncertainly. "Now, how'd you like to tell me your name?"

"Jack."

The doctor smiled sweetly, leaning his weasel-like face too close to his stubborn patient's. " Wouldn't you like to say your _whole_ name?" Only silence and a deeper scowl answered his question. "You see, _my_ name is Dr. Jonas Fogg. I have a first name and a last name. Don't you have a last name, too?"

"No."

Frowning, Fogg turned to Mrs. Lovett. "Doesn't he know it?" Jack's jaws clenched as he saw the amusement spring to the baker's eyes.

"Oh, I'm sure he does. Don't you, dear?" She was trying not to giggle. He could hear it bubbling out in her voice, and growled through his teeth. The Asylum was eerie. It somehow seemed to embody everything he ran from when he gave Scotland Yard the slip: chains and weeping stone walls, wretched bloody screaming, prodding strangers, the noose, the whispers of a madness that, confined, would turn on itself. In that dim office, reeking of chloroform, he was suddenly sure that, if he were ever caught, he _would _go mad. The madhouse frightened him, but it couldn't shake or enrage him like that stifled laugh. "He's usually very friendly, poor bugger. Just being shy, I guess."

"Well, I will need the name for records." Eleanor's eyes met the Ripper's, questioning him silently. He searched her eyes through the same stare. _This is insane._ It was the hospital, the bloody chloroform that made the air in the room seem to burn, the feel of the ragged cloth around his wrists that made him suddenly doubt the impossibility of his capture. _Why did I let them tie my hands?_

"Well…" Mrs. Lovett paused, her eyes not leaving Jack's. "If he doesn't want you to know…" The Ripper felt himself stop breathing, trying to read her. There was love in her eyes, somewhere. She loved the barber. _But you knew that. _Why should it matter more now? Of course they should pretend to be married. Didn't it make more sense? Wasn't at least some of that love for him?

"I know it's difficult dealing with madness in loved ones, ma'am, but you really mustn't humor him." _She doesn't know. She wouldn't tell him._ They still stared. Jack watched her decision forming. _She'll find a way to buy Todd the time he needs._

_She won't let him leave me. _Jack startled, not recognizing this new fear until he tried to quell it. The baker opened her mouth, her words catching for a moment. "Tripp," she said. "Jack… Jack Tripp, his name is."

XXXXXXX

Standing in the dark in the broad, dirty passage, Sweeney felt that he had been swallowed by some stone beast. Dripping water echoed on the wet stone floor, falling from the ceiling, invisible in the blackness above him. The bars on either side, thin, bent, and rusted, loomed like ribs in the faint light, and from behind them came the sound of whispering and muttering and shuffling like the breath in giant lungs. Samuel's footsteps, the barbers own steps, the echoes of their slow treads through the gut of the Asylum mingled in the gloom, a heartbeat.

The beast exhaled a stink as Mr. Todd paused in its belly. It was not overwhelming, but it was undeniable. It was the smell of unwashed bodies in unwashed cells, the smell of shit and vermin and sickness, of the foul dampness that clung to stones and iron like sweat. It was the smell of the prison ship, of the cells of Botany Bay.

_I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders, for the cruelty of man is as wondrous as Peru…_

Samuel past him, trundling on toward the men's side of the ward and speaking softly as he went. "You just be careful not to excite them, is the thing. We don't make too much noise, or turn the lights too bright on 'em."

He knew the dark, the constant, sleepless murmuring and the sound of men moving in the shadows. He had lived it.

"_Barker, you miserable git! Barker! Get over here!" A whip uncoiled with a leathery hiss, snapping at the air like a serpent. "Barker!" That dark around him, wet and smothering. "Barker, you get here, or you won't have a speck of skin left on your filthy little back!" You can't threaten a dead man._

He followed the orderly towards the cells, steps slow and automatic. "The light, it upsets 'em, you see. Could be they don't like to see where they are, seeing it ain't where they think they are."

_It was dark. The light was Lucy. The light was life. He was sure of it. Outside, he could feel the sun pouring red into the waters of the bay as it rose. He knew it, even in the dark._

"Do you have the keys?"

Samuel looked at him, his wide eyes white in the darkness. "You – You can't go in there! They'd rip you to bits!"

Sweeney looked past the other man, seeing the bars and the pale eyes behind them. "I want to know someone will have the keys. In case anything happens in the cells. They can get in. They can help."

_What hell made Jack the Ripper?_

"My poor brother… I just want to see them."

"H-here they are, gov." The keys jingled as Samuel fished them out of his pocket. They gleamed faintly in the dim light. "I've got 'em right here."

_The guard was beside him, a tower, snatching at his collar to drag him away. The prison door creaked. Another man cried out, "Just bring him already, will you?" And from behind the second guard, the man in the door, the red light crept into the cells, glinting off the set of heavy keys dangling from his captor's belt. Keys to the door, to the pantry, to the armory, to the gates, to the shed that housed the colony's little fleet of leaky rowboats. And in that gleam, the cunning, cutting soul of Sweeney Todd sprang to life._

XXXXXXX

"There now, Mr. Tripp, that's not so bad, is it?" Turning back to his patient, Fogg held up the candle and casually tipped the melted wax out onto the floor. Jack wondered how the flame could still burn when it felt like the air in the room had been drawn away. "That's a fine name." _Just a name. Not even his name. It didn't matter at all. _He tried to breathe, his fingers winding themselves into the worn cloth of his sleeves. _It doesn't mean a bloody thing._ "Now we'll play a little game." Jack finally looked at the doctor, his eyes darting almost hopefully between Fogg's narrow face and the candle's flame. "All you have to do is watch this little candle. Don't even move your head. Just follow it with your eyes. All right?"

_Just a name. _Jack glanced nervously at Mrs. Lovett. _Just a candle. _He drew a shaky breath, turning back to the doctor. _It's just a bloody hospital. Just buying time, Jack._

He could feel Fogg watching his eyes as the candle drifted side to side in front of his face. He had to force himself to follow the flickering little flame and not return the doctor's stare. Across the room, Eleanor's form was blotted out by the little glare as the candle passed between them. Her shadow flickered behind her. He felt the chill of the asylum creep up his back. _It's just a hospital._

The candle paused in front of his face. Jack looked at it, almost relieved that it had stopped, as if he could have failed even such a simple test. "Hmm…" Fogg peered down his thin nose at the candle for a moment, the thrust it suddenly toward the Ripper, stopping just short of his face as Jack leaned back with a startled yelp. "His reactions seem fine." The doctor whirled the candle in dizzying circles, letting Jack, feeling shaken again, to follow its glowing trail as best he could. He turned to the baker. "He has got mad looking eyes, though, hasn't he? Looks very mad, indeed…"

"Always thought he was rather dashing, myself." Mrs. Lovett looked down suddenly finding the flour trapped in the black lace of her gloves fascinating. Jack knew she was trying not to look at him, to keep from seeing her smirk. "But if that's your professional opinion…"

Fogg grunted, setting the candle off to the side and rubbing his narrow hands together. "Now, let's have a look at that silly head of yours." He reached for Jack's battered top hat, but the Ripper leaned away, scowling. His anger over Eleanor's amusement had at least thawed some of his fear. "Oh, come along, now. Can't I take your nice hat? I'll give you a sweetie." _What? _Jack could only stare as the doctor pulled from the pocket of his lab coat a handful of butterscotch and peppermints.

"Is that standard procedure here?" Jack didn't need to look up. Even as his stared, dumbstruck, at the candies, he could hear the same shock in the baker's voice.

"Of course. We're one happy family here, and I always reward my poor children with a sweetie when they behave." Fogg took advantage of the Ripper's awe to quickly tip the hat away with his free hand, letting it fall onto the counter behind Jack. "There. I'll just take a look at you." Stuffing the sweets back into his pockets, the doctor took his patient's head in both hands, forcing Jack's face down as he dragged his disheveled head closer. "He has fits, you say?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Dreadful violent ones, he has. He scares us half to death." A woman whose brother-in-law was being committed to an insane asylum did not laugh. Mrs. Lovett was struggling to stay in character as she watched Fogg root through Jack's unruly hair, tapping occasionally at his skull with bony fingers. "Nearly cut my throat a time or two."

"Has he, really?" The doctor looked up at her, surprised. "That's remarkable! I'd love to see one of these fits. In fact, I'd suggest you leave him here for observation." He smiled like a child with a new toy. "Oh, won't you make a fine addition to our little family, Mr. Tripp!" He ran his fingers idly through the Ripper's hair. "Even if you haven't got the nicest hair, I think it'll sell." Fogg looked up at the baker ahain. "What do you say? I can call an orderly right now?"

Jack felt ice water creeping through his veins. Still hunched, Fogg's miserable hands on his head, he pressed his arms closer to his chest, feeling the hard shape of his knife beneath his coat.

Nellie was silent, staring. Deciding. "Perhaps we'd better wait till him brother gets back."

XXXXXXX

Sweeney smiled in the dark, clutching the set of keys so that the warm blood that dripped from his hands slipped between his skin and the rough flecks of rust. Along the wide corridor, the wooden cross bars were off all the cell doors but one, the beams that trapped them shut cast into the hall or propped against the walls. The bolts were drawn, the heavy padlocks fallen away. All that held the doors closed against the thronging prisoners were loops of slick intestine, twisted and tied through the bars.

_One of Saucy Jacky's tricks. _Mr. Todd grinned wider as he stepped toward the last locked door. Screaming rose all around him, its intensity soaring as hysteria spread from the cage of brown-haired madmen who had witnessed Samuel's death, who now howled and shrieked at his gutted corpse, to the far ends of the ward. Already, the women in the final cell were beating at the gate that held them, their arms reaching through the rusted bars, clawing at the smell of blood. They were dirty, their wide eyes rolling as they shrieked. And all had yellow hair.

His smile faded. Stepping up to the door, he reached slowly through the boney, scrabbling limbs for the bar. The women's nails bit and slid on the bloody leather sleeves of his coat.

_There's tawny and there's golden saffron,_

_There's flaxen and there's blonde…_

He let the bar fall, reaching for the bolt. It slid back with a squeal, and the screaming, the snatching answered by doubling their fury. Behind him, he heard one of the heavy iron door grate against stone. His slippery ties were starting to give, as he intended. The freed maniacs would overrun the asylum, and no questions would be asked about the night's deaths. Ignoring the grasping prisoners, he fit the key into the hanging padlock.

_There's course and fine,_

_There's straight and curly,_

_There's gray, there's white,_

_There's ash, there's pearly…_

The harsh sound of the heaving gate came again, and she door swung open with a metallic scream. Sweeney dropped the keys, braced his free hand against the door, and let the lock fall. For a moment, the skeletal hands clutched at his wrist as he held the door shut against the weight of the women on the other side. Then, stepping back, he let the door fly open.

_Buff and ochre and _

_Straw and apricot…_

The blondes burst out at once, plunging the barber into a stream of bodies. Ready, he threw the women to either side, forcing his way into the cell in spite of their clawing limbs. A starved thing threw herself at him as he reached the door, but flung her back into the darkness. A girl writhed beneath his feet, trampled by the others. It didn't matter. None of them mattered. He was inside.

Outside, more doors sprang open as the inmates pushed at the bars, attacking the bloody ties with nails and teeth.

Sweeney scanned the cell. One girl lay on a grimy cot, empty eyed and murmuring. Another clawed at the stone walls with bleeding hands. And in the darkest corner huddled a girl perhaps sixteen, with hair like wheat and a face as white as bone. _Johanna…_

Without a word, Mr. Todd leapt across the filthy prison, swept his daughter into his bloody arms, and dashed back into the chaos of the ward.

XXXXXXX

"Well, I'm sure you'll want to discuss the fees and such with my husband when he gets back. Head of the household, you know." Mrs. Lovett finally dropped into the ratty looking chair behind her, more for the sake of her aching head than her aching feet. Stalling Mr. Fogg had become rather tiring. "Don't want to run through all this twice, now, do you?"

"Oh, it's no trouble at all, ma'am. I never tire of dealing with my poor children's other families." The doctor smiled happily. "You know, it's the most fascinating thing in times like these, what with the murders in Whitechapel and all. I get so sort through every loon and half-wit in the East End. Everybody's suddenly certain his eccentric Uncle Whatsit's Jack the Ripper." Both Jack and Nellie startled, exchanging a glance, but Fogg didn't notice. Laughing, he flung his lanky arm over the Ripper's shoulders. "Now, we're not ever going to see _him_ here, wherever the devil is. He's not half foolish enough to wind up like your brother here. That's my take on it."

"That's good for him, then." Mrs. Lovett glanced at the door. _Come on, Mr. T. _Should it take this long? What if he couldn't find her? "You hear that, Jack? You ought to think more like the murderer."

Fogg straightened, letting go of his stunned patient. "Oh, no, I didn't mean it like -" Stopping, he looked at the far wall, as if he needed to see through it. "What was that?"

"What?" Listening, Nellie could hear a chorus of screams somewhere further into the asylum. "They don't always do that?"

"Not so loud. It…" The doctor's beady black eyes grew wider. "It sounds like they're coming closer." Mrs. Lovett smiled. _That's my Mr. Todd, then. _"Excuse me. I'd better see what's happening."

He went for the door, but Nellie was faster. He couldn't interfere with Sweeney's escape. Or theirs. She threw herself against the heavy wood, blocking his escape. "Ma'am, I'm afraid I have to go _now_. Move."

The baker glanced at Jack. "Ready, love?"

"What is this!? What are you-" Fogg followed her eyes, looking back to the counter in time to see a grin split the Ripper's face as he pulled a long knife out from under his coat and, with a flick of his wrist, slashed the long piece of cloth that hung between his hands. "Oh!" The doctor stumbled back from the door, raising his arms in from of him as Jack sprang towards him.

It didn't do him any good. His arms slowly sank as he collapsed, his blood pouring from the bleeding gash in his throat. Mrs. Lovett opened the door and stepped out, looking down the dark hall. Coming toward them, she saw two white-faced figures, a man and a girl with yellow hair. Behind them came a wave of wailing madmen. "Jack!" She looked back to where the Ripper, dripping blood, still stood over the doctor's wound-riddled corpse. "Jack, we've got to go." He looked at her, startled, then down at his kill, as if he couldn't quite remember where he was. "_Now!" _In the hall, Sweeney and Johanna were leading the charge, running faster and faster. They'd be at the office door at any second. Inside, Jack stared at her. She could almost see the wheels spinning behind his mad blue eyes, the pieces of reality reconnecting. But he wasn't moving. And Nellie knew she was not going to outrun Fogg's children if the waited much long. "_Jack, run!_" But without waiting, she bolted out into the hallway and ran.

XXXXXXX

"Do you think they'll be back soon?" Anthony's voice cut through the stillness of Mrs. Lovett's parlor, drowning out the ticking of the baker's long ago broken cuckoo clock. Toby stared at the little fire in the hearth. He had given up answering that question half an hour ago.

It had been almost three hours since his mum had hurried out of the shop, a demon leading and a fiend in tow, not saying where the three were bound. To rescue a girl, the sailor has told him. From a madhouse. The boy scowled. He wouldn't trust those two to lead her to church, never mind an asylum.

A woman cried out in the street, and both boys jumped, craning to see the door, but it didn't open. Outside, they heard the harsh squawking of a flustered woman, and a man's laughing reply, indistinct, before the sounds passed by them.

Toby's little fists closed tight as he settled back down. The worst part was not knowing what was going on. Even Anthony, who Toby couldn't help noticing was a bit dense, knew more than he did. The sailor thought Jack was a doctor from Whitechapel, although it was only because he believed Mrs. Lovett had called him after his spill down the stairs. And Toby was certain that nobody had fallen down the barber's steps.

Again, voices sounded from outside, a man's wailing. It sounded almost right outside their windows. He shuddered, but kept his eyes on the coals at the base of the fire.

He hated them both, the barber and the Ripper. Even Anthony shared his silent curses, as harmless as he seemed, for adding more pieces to the puzzle and for sending Mrs. Lovett on this fool's errand. His nails bit into his little palms, bringing tears to his eyes, but his scowl only grew deeper as he tried to blink them away, opening his fists and burying his hands in the cushions of his worn old couch. _If anyone else comes to hurt my mum, I swear I'll…_

"Don't you think they'll be back before too long?" The boy stared ahead, his eyes opening in wonder as his fingers found something hard, something he had forgotten, beneath the pillows. "Don't you, Toby?" Ignoring his guest, Toby pulled it out, seeing again the switchblade knife Jack had given him. "Toby…?"

It was a little big for his hands, but his fingers found the catch and the blade sprang out with a soft hiss. Its sudden motion startled him, but not nearly as much as the unexpected beauty of its blade. For a moment he was lost in the firelight along the steel.

"Toby, what are you…"

He looked up, stunned at having forgotten the room around him. "Sorry, I…"

A crash sounded from the barber shop. "What was that!?"

XXXXXXX

Turpin stared as the white lather spread around the shattered bits of the mug at his beadle's feet, then lifted his eyes to sneer at the trembling henchman. _Idiot!_ Angrily, he turned back to his investigation, trying to ignore the fading fear that the noise had caused in him. The shop itself was eerie, as if in the absence of the sunlight and the current occupant, the place would be the haunt of the Barker's ghosts. And they'd be weeping ghosts, pleading for their daughter, their Johanna. _My Johanna…_

He tried to shake it off as he crossed to the back of the room, searching for anywhere Todd and their sailor might hide the evidence of the work, but the feeling wouldn't leave him. He looked in a covered, ratty crib, but saw only a doll's porcelain skull in the white moonlight. Ghostly. He looked in the trunk against the wall, and found white shirts like shrouds.

For an absurd moment, he wondered if Barker was dead. Then he spotted the dark splotches on the inside of the trunk. Leaning closer, he took a match from the box in his pocket and struck in. In the sudden small flare, the dark stains showed reddish-brown. "This trunk is stained with blood." He all but whispered, half stunned by his own success. "This could easily hold a – a corpse…"

"My lord…" Beadle Bamford's voice was choked with fear. Turpin stood, turning. "My lord, there's drops of… It's all over the counter…"

Turpin swept across the room, they dying match held before him. It was true. Dark rep spots were scattered across the tabletop. The soap dish and a spare mug were flecked with scarlet. An old leather strop was sticky to the touch. But the worst damage was to a pair of faded portraits in a jointed frame. They were not only splattered but smeared with drying gore, as if the glass above the photograph had been caressed by a bloody hand.

The judge picked up the frame, peering through the crimson film at the face in both pictures. He knew that woman. She looked just like his Johanna. _Lucy… _And the man beside her… The man who had welcomed him to this shop and schemed to steal away his Johanna, _their_ Johanna…

"Benjamin Barker..."

XXXXXXX

Sweeney ran, not sure whether the pounding her heard was that of his own heart or if the madmen running behind him were gaining on him, their bare feet drumming down the stone floors. He knew that part of their screaming was Johanna's cries. He was carrying her like a child. She was frightened. There was no time to calm her, though.

In front of him, Mrs. Lovett ran as fast as she could, one hand trying to lift her skirts out of the way of her flashing boots, but she was already winded. Sweeney shifted Johanna in his arms, throwing her against his chest so that she flung her arms around his neck and clutched the back of his coat. With his freed hand, he reached out, taking Mrs. Lovett by the shoulder to push her on.

Behind them the door to Fogg's office crashed open again. _Jack._ He was only seconds behind them, but so were the lunatics. And the door was ahead, the terrified porter already scrambling for the key. It would be close, but he should be able to pull it off.

The doorman fumbled with the keys, looking behind him in fright, but managed to swing the door open before they reached it. For a moment, he hesitated at the threshold, not sure whether to run or to wait and help them. He waited long enough to give the barber his chance.

Sweeney shoved Nellie toward the door. She was already breathing in gasps, finding barely enough air to squeal as she stumbled into the night. Sweeney snatched the man's keys and kicked him hard in the knee. Behind him, he could hear the Ripper, sprinting, almost at the door. He wrenched the keys out of the porter's hand as the man fell. "Jack, get him! No witnesses!"Jack faltered, just a leap away from the door, and looked at the barber. Then he pounced at the yelling porter, letting Sweeney step aside and out of the hospital.

On the asylum's steps, Sweeney let Johanna's feet swing back under her, carefully breaking her grip on his neck. There were tears in her eyes. He had no time to wipe them away. Mrs. Lovett was behind him, watching him, panting. He caught her bewildered, hopeful eyes as he spun back to the door. Her adoring eyes. _No time. _It would only take one slash to dispatch the doorman. He doubted even the Ripper would dare to do more with Fogg's freed inmates charging the hospital's open door.

Sweeney Todd reached out and pushed the heavy iron door shut.

"Mr. T! What are you doing!?" Nellie pulled at his arm as he rammed the stolen key into the lock. "Stop! Open the door! Mr. Todd!" Sweeney said nothing, only taking her by the wrist as he turned, flinging the keys into the asylum's overgrown yard. "You can't just leave-"

_Yes. I can, Mrs. Lovett. _He grinned as he reached for Johanna's hand and led them back toward the street. Behind him, he heard the door begin to crash and shake on its hinges and Jack's muffled voice. "Todd! Eleanor! Let me out!" He walked faster, all but dragging the baker, who still tried to pull him back.

"What about Jack! Mr. Tod - " Acting on instinct, Sweeney pulled her swiftly into him, stopping her mouth with his as they collided. He felt her resistance melt as she leaned dizzily into the kiss. _No time…_ Half reluctantly, he broke away, still pulling her by the arm. Mrs. Lovett followed, looking silently between the barber and the madhouse door, where Jack's cries were lost among the other inmates'.

XXXXXXX


	14. Chapter 14

**Kidney Pie – Chapter 14**

_NOTE: A character called Aaron Kosminski shows up in this chapter, and I just wanted to let you know where he comes from. He was a Ripper suspect who died in an insane asylum. He did eat bread out of the gutters in Whitechapel. He was not quite as retarded as I have portrayed him here._

XXXXXXX

"Eleanor! Mrs. Lovett! Todd!" More screaming than calling, Jack the Ripper tore at the heavy iron door of the asylum, rattling it on its hinges as he struggled with the unyielding handle. His knife hand left scarlet smears as he beat senselessly at the door. It would never budge. He knew it wouldn't. But behind him, pinning him in the hopeless effort, was a mass of filthy bodies, their arms reaching over his shoulders, around his side, beating at the door with them. "Sweeney Todd, you bloody bastard! Open this door!" They were screaming behind him, clawing at his jacket, at his collar, at his hair. The arms wrapped around him, pulling. They fell, howling at the weight that crushed them into the floor, and clutched at his legs. With a wild yell, he slashed blindly behind him as they forced his blood-soaked left arm away from the door. He felt the knife sink into flesh again and again, but there were too many hands. They caught his arm. They dragged and twisted like animals, wrenching at his shoulder. His right hand, slick with blood, started to slip on the doorknob. _"PLEASE, SOMEBODY LET ME OUT!" _

With a strangled roar, the Ripper fell, toppling backwards over the creatures behind him and into the thrashing sea of limbs. The hospital became a forest of feet as he hit the floor. The inmates flooded to fill his space at the door, crowding around him, stepping on him. The scrabbled over bodies like rats. But Jack understood. Getting through that door meant life. The asylum was death. Jack understood very well.

A skeleton of a man planted its filthy foot hard on the Ripper's chest. Jack slashed at the calf, cutting tendons and tearing flesh. The man fell and Jack started to struggle, flailing at anything that came within range of his knife as he tried to regain his feet. In the shrieking human tide, he carved a little eddy around him, and, slowly, he stood and started to advance, trying to escape the crush for that hopeless door. But his clawing, cutting progress brought the attention of the madmen to him. They beat at his back as he fought past them. They tore at him, trying to reach his face, trying to pull him back by the hair.

And they screamed. The sound made him choke on a howl of his own. _I hate screamers!_

He finally neared the edge of the crowd, his breath ragged and his vision starting to turn a blurry red, whether from rage or from the blood that dripped into his eyes he wasn't sure. But he did know that he was almost free. Just a few feet away was air and room to move, was the hallway that might lead – _had_ to lead – to another way out of the asylum. He cut blindly across a woman's torso. She fell, but he felt her teeth close on his ankle as he staggered on. He kicked her away. He was almost through.

A surge of animal thankfulness hit the Ripper as he reached the edge of the crowd. He panted through a mad smile, joy and the stinging blood making tears well up in his eyes. He would have laughed, had one of Fogg's children not leapt onto his back, snatched his necktie, and pulled hard. The knot slipped against his throat.

It was a woman. Her knees were pressed into his sides, her screams exploding in his ears. He tried to yell, but couldn't. He tried to stab her, but couldn't reach her, her body pressed too close against his back. He hacked at her knee with his blade, reeling under her weight as he stumbled into the empty space he had fought to reach. The stones and shadows of the asylum were lost behind a field of black spots that bloomed and withered in seconds. His knife caught his own side as he still slashed dizzily, clumsily away. He opened his mouth, but couldn't cry out. With his free hand, he tried to pry the straining cloth away from his throat. He couldn't. Very slowly, fighting every inch, Jack sank to his knees. _No…_

Over the roaring of his own blood in his ears, he couldn't hear the bellow that came tearing out of the throng behind him. But he felt the impact as something bore down again and again on the woman, felt her twist with pain and claw more fiercely at him. He felt her finally release his tie as her bleeding carcass was pulled off his back.

Gasping, Jack crawled blindly away, drowning in the thunder of his own pulse. He barely resisted when he felt his coat snatched from behind and strong hands hauling him to his feet, allowing himself to be half-dragged away. The only thing that seemed to register was the air flowing in and out of his lungs, sweet relief and the burning in his throat forming the two poles that the shattered pieces of his mind began to reform around. Slowly, the deafening rush of his blood faded and his vision cleared, as his new captor slung him around and shook him like a straw doll.

He could barely make out the words that began to cut through the more distant screaming. As the asylum came back into focus, Jack found himself looking up at a grinning face, unkempt and filthy and very familiar. It was one of the very few that could be found leering through the rain and fog of Whitechapel's worst nights. The face was speaking, gibbering, as its arms continued to shake the recovering Ripper. "TopHat! Get upsy, TopHat. It's morning! Jacky, get upsy!"

Jack put his hands on the other man's wrists, making him stop shaking him for long enough to get unsteadily to his feet. He stared at his rescuer as if he wasn't sure if he was really there. "Kos… Kosminski…?"

XXXXXXX

"Where's Abberline?" The picture frame lay open on the table, Lucy's pale figure staring like a ghost in the moonlight that streamed in through the window. The blood staining her form screamed of more guilt than Sweeney Todd's, and Turpin couldn't take his eyes off it.

"Outside, my lord." Bamford stood close enough that the judge could have hit him with his elbow , but his voice was so weak he was barely heard.

"Get him _now._" He didn't look up as he heard the beadle's steps cross to the door. His henchman, he knew, was far too frightened to be discreet. Turpin cursed silently, restraining his growing anger. _It doesn't matter. _There was nobody in the shop below. During their entire wait in the carriage – two agonizing hours – the shop had been as still as death. But every one of the beadle's crashing footfalls stirred up whatever sense it was that made his blood run colder. "_Be quiet!_"

It made no difference; Bamford was already at the door. His fingers shook so badly that the judge could hear the doorknob rattling in his grip. Turpin scowled but didn't lift his eyes. Like scarlet eyes, the flecks of blood that hung on the barber's possessions stared at him, reminding him that if he was wrong, if the house wasn't empty, if somebody returned, he would be facing, with only a coward and a man lost in his drug-inspired dreams, a murderer and more. A murderer who wasn't satisfied with murder, and who had a particular grudge against the judge himself. "My lord… Abberline's gone!"

"What?"

"He fell down at the foot of the stairs. That's right where I left him! He…"

Judge Turpin felt his heart begin to beat faster as he stepped toward the open door, but he forced the fear away. "Then he's gotten up and wandered off. He can't have gone far. Just -"

"My lord, they're coming!"

The judge froze, only a few steps from the door. "No."

"Yes, they are! That's Todd right there!" Hysteria added a wavering , pathetic edge to the beadle's voice as he stood rooted in the doorway, staring into the moonlight. "There's Mrs. Lovett, too. And…" The judge ran the rest of the way, peering past his terrified stooge. "And they're bringing back another girl!"

They were. Turning into the courtyard, the barber, his white face almost glowing in the night, walked in front of two women. One tall and pale – the baker, the thought – half led and half dragged another skirted creature towards the shop. The second girl was small and fair, staying close beside her guide. The moon's beams struck her light hair and, for one chilling moment, thought the unfortunate thing was his own Johanna. The thought passed. He sneered down at the little party, his pride swelling with the knowledge that _his _Johanna was safely beyond the reach of this breathing ghost of her father.

"M-m-my lord…"

"Get in here, quickly." Turpin retreated back into the dark of the Tonsorial Parlor, taking the beadle's shoulder to pull him out of sight. The door swung shut, bells ringing. The two froze behind it, listening, but no footsteps climbed the stairs outside to investigate the sound. Turpin let out a relieved sigh and released the beadle's shoulder.

"We… Maybe… We could sneak down the stairs and get back to the coach before-"

"No." The judge felt anger welling up again, black and burning. It suddenly seemed deeply wrong for the barber to be back, to have returned not only to London but to have returned to this very shop, to the space beneath their feet. It seemed wrong that Barker, having been defeated and destroyed as Lucy's protector, should be allowed to return to ruin his efforts for Johanna. "You say he has a woman. He seems to commit his crimes here. So we hide."

XXXXXXX

The wild notes of the bells above her doorway became the opening of a whole chorus of questions as Mrs. Lovett stormed into her pie shop, pushing Johanna in front of her and clutching the hand of her tenant, who walked behind her. All the way to Fleet Street, she had gripped that hand so hard that her knuckles turned white beneath her fingerless black gloves, in part out of anger at the way he had betrayed Jack at the asylum but also as if she felt that Sweeney would disappear before she could have more kisses like the one on Fogg's doorstep.

They had fled in near silence, their few hurried whispers serving only to explain to Johanna that her rescuer was the Mr. Todd who had agreed to shelter her and Anthony until they could escape from London. Unfortunately, Nellie's promise that the sailor was waiting for her didn't seem to reassure the poor girl very much. _No wonder, the silly little nit._ That boy was hopeless.

"Johanna!" Shouting, that boy was the first to meet them. He rushed into the kitchen, freezing at the sight of his love, red-eyed and trembling, with her dress painted with blood. "Are you hurt!? Mrs. Lovett, ma'am, will she be alright?"

Toby was only just behind the sailor. She saw him stuff something into his coat pocket as he came out of the parlor. "Mum, you didn't have any trouble, did you? You're safe with them?"

"No, everybody's alright, the blood just -" She paused, thinking. _Don't worry, dearies. I'm sure the chap it came from had it coming. _"Ah… Mr. T?" Mrs. Lovett regretted calling the barber to their attention as soon as Anthony turned to look. Sweeney's hands were still covered with clotted blood. The sleeves of his dark leather coat were thick with it.

"Mr. Todd – are…" Anthony's eyes went wide, and he put his arms instinctively around Johanna, who had begun to sob. "Mr. Todd, was somebody…" He choked on the next word. "…_killed?_"

Toby, his dark eyes keen, never looked away from the baker. "Mum, what happened to Jack?" Nellie's thoughts gave a little lurch, as if her mind had stumbled over that question. Mr. Todd's hand slipped out of hers.

"He's…" She could almost kick herself for running before the Ripper was finished with Fogg, seeing in her mind Jack's frightened face as he sat on the counter. _Poor thing. _She supposed she was safer without him. _And Mr. Todd… _"He's with his own kind."

"With the other doctors, you mean?" Anthony asked.

"Not exactly." Mrs. Lovett felt the whole roomful of eyes fixed on her, and suddenly didn't like it. She turned back to Mr. Todd. "Well, don't suppose there's anything you'd like to say, is there, love?" The barber was silent, and for just an instant she could have slapped him for putting them through that, for locking up her Jack, and leaving her to make their explanations alone. But in his eyes, she saw a trace of the same sly intelligence he had used that evening. He looked at each one of them, judging. He intended something for their whole group, but she could almost swear that his eyes had rested just a little longer on her. Her anger vanished.

"Yes." He was looking at Johanna, but let his eyes meet hers as he stepped back toward the door. "There is." He stepped out, making the bells sway again, and she heard his steps climbing the stairs to the his shop.

XXXXXXX

_Aaron Kosminski…_ Memories followed the two prisoners down the hall, clinging to Jack's blood-soaked coattails as he and Aaron made for Fogg's office. Nights full of fog and wind and blood crowded the deserted hallway. Kosminski, who even Jack had to admit was in fact mad, babbled to himself cheerfully in his native Polish, as he did often while free in Whitechapel, following at the Ripper's heels like a dog and carrying the bloody pair of scissors he had used on his friend's assailant. Jack grinned.

An immigrant, Kosminski had stumbled upon Jack in the course of a very productive night. His double event – two whores in one hour. Aaron had roared about "the alley girlies" and kicked the carcass of the first, and created a bond with the killer something akin to professional courtesy.

Aaron, Jack had later discovered, also ate out the gutters, which had amused the Ripper on many less successful nights.

He hadn't known that the law or the saner Kosminskis had dragged the poor devil to Fogg's. _We'll both show them we're not that easy to nail down. _The door to the doctor's office swung open with a crash as Jack charged into it, halting inside to survey the damage he had done. He hadn't carved up Fogg like he did with his ladies, but it had felt so bloody good just to drive the knife home over and over again, as if he could have killed his fears and the madhouse itself if he'd stabbed the old bugger enough. Certainly, the doctor looked as though Jack had made the effort. He smiled, stepping towards the corpse.

"Keys, boss." Fogg's grubby white coat was now a sticky scarlet, but Jack's hands, his fingerless white gloves and sleeves, were already thick with blood. He fumbled at the dead man's pockets. "And when we find them, you can find another way out. We're as good as free!" Clawing fistfuls of rustling, wrapped candy from Fogg's pockets, Jack hesitated, shoving them into his own as an afterthought before he continued his search. Brushing aside the flaps of the stained white jacket, he found the keys hanging on a crowded ring from the doctor's belt. _Ha!_ He quickly undid the clip that held them, but a thought made him stop, as cold as the metal his fingers closed around. "You _can, _can't you?" He looked up, meeting Kosminski's vacant, staring eyes. "Aaron?"

"_Crying at the window and tirling at the lock…" _Half singing under his breath, Kosmiski rolled his eyes, as if looking for an exit in Fogg's office. Still kneeling in the pool of blood, Jack stared dumbstruck as his ally raised his hand to point uncertainly at the door that let back into the hallway. "Good, Jacky?"

Jack blinked, stunned. "No… To the outside, boss…" Aaron looked back, hopelessly, his pointing hand slowly sinking. "A back door, a service entrance… _A way out…_"

"Out.. outy out…" Kosminski spun, muttering in Polish as he searched the room again. This time he stopped looking at the counter. "Top hat!" Jack only watched, his mind racing, knowing that every moment they delayed moved Eleanor that much further away, as the madman crossed to pick up the worn hat and hold it out towards its owner. "Jack TopHat! Jack!"

_We'll get out. We have to… _There must have been another way out. There had to be, somewhere. Even a window. _If we can find it… _Kosminski stepped nearer, smiling madly, with the hat held out in front of him. "Ja-acky!" His eyes fell on the battered old hat, and slowly, Jack began to laugh.

Of course they would escape. How could they not? _I'm Jack the Ripper! _Unstoppable, invisible, as pointless to try to capture as a wisp of Whitechapel fog. _And Saucy Jack's got a dear lady to see! _His howling laughter filled the office and made the walls cackle back at him. Tears washed the thickening blood from his cheeks. He reached for his hat, and, still laughing, the Ripper bounded out the door.

Kosminski scrambled after him, chuckling, as he dashed down the hallway. Jack skidded to a stop at the first door he came to, but the smell that rose behind the bars was enough to tell him that the room was sealed. The next doors all held only the same reek. He ran on, finding another doorway not far away. It was solid wood, reinforced with steel bands and bars, and held with a massive padlock. Jack stepped nearer, holding his fingers up to the cracks around the door's edges. Behind him, he heard Aaron give a strangled squeal. His friend's hands seized the back of his coat, squeezing a stream of sticky blood out of the drenched cloth. "No, Jack. No! That's the _bad room!_" Jack ignored him, smiling. From the other side of the door, a draft cooled the congealing gore on his fingertips.

Stepping back, he pulled the stolen keys from his pocket and fumbled for one, ramming it into the lock. Kosminski wailed as he rattled it, cursing under his breath, but Jack only pulled it out to find another key. It, too, refused to turn. He tried a third, and the lock sprang open. He stopped, letting the ring full of keys drop along with the open padlock. Slowly, he pushed the door open.

On the other side, he found a sort of medical torture chamber. Gurneys stood to either side, flocked like stained, silent sheep around the wooden slab of an operating table, restraints dangling from its corners. A grim piece of machinery stood by the nearest wall, heaped with clips and wires. The sight of it made Jack hesitate in the doorway. Behind him, Aaron pulled uselessly back on his coat, whimpering. "_Bad,_ TopHat, it's _bad…_" Jack stepped inside, dragging his friend behind him. He didn't have time to care. Across the room, the night blew in through the iron bars of a window. A way out.

He looked around, spotting a sleek black bag standing on a stained counter. _Perfect! _Jack charged across the room for it, ignoring the sobbing weight that was Kosminski. It opened with a clean, welcoming click, and Jack smiled at the gleaming array of tools inside even as Aaron cried out and wrapped his bloody arms around Jack's middle, making his cut sting again. He reached in, his spirits bounding, and chose a heavy surgical saw. He had to fight of a giggle when he held it up in the dark, gleaming. Scrambling to the window, he nearly tripped over Aaron's dragging feet, but he grinned madly as he stumbled into the moonlight and attacked the window's heavy bars, drowning the broken Polish pleading in the sound of grinding metal.

"Brave, TopHat. Brave, good, Mister Jack…"

The first bar wrenched away with a screech and fell into the yard below. Jack started on a second, sawing feverishly, knowing that the dark iron bars was taking the edge off of his new toy. _But I'll do it to get to you, Mrs. Lovett! _The bar followed the first, spinning. _I'll do it to get you!_

He spun around, breaking Kosminski's hold, and let his beaming blue eyes rove over the room again. Across one of the waiting gurneys hung a stained sheet. Jack darted for it, snatching it triumphantly and using the saw to cut long slashes lengthwise, then, clawing at the ragged edges of the cuts, tore the sheet into four long strips that flapped behind him as he raced back to the window. Quickly, he tied one end of the first strip to one of the remaining bars, adding two more to the end of that before flinging his makeshift rope out the window and looking out. It wasn't more than twenty feet down, and the three segments he already had swung only a short drop above the ground. He let the final strip flutter to the floor of the operating room as he went back to the medical kit, replacing the saw and latching the set, which he then tossed out the window after the rope.

Aaron watched with wide eyes as Jack squeezed through the mangled bars, gripping at the sheet as he braced his feet against the dark walls. "Now you wait, boss, and when I get to the bottom, then you came down, too. Right?"

"In the bad room. Wait for TopHat." Kosminski stooped and picked up the last shred of sheet, stabbing the center with his bloodied scissors and tearing it apart, just as Jack had done. "Be just like brave, brave Jack TopHat…"

Ignoring him, Jack started to climb down, watching the red prints of his fingers rise higher and higher above his head. He hadn't gone far when his eye caught a drifting white streamer float past him, looking too much like the sheet he clung to. He looked up.

Leaning out the window, Kosminski stared adoringly down at the Ripper. The shreds he had already made of the extra sheet hung pointlessly from the rest of the bars, but Kosminski had not finished his imitation. "Aaron be _just like _good TopHat." Jack watched in horror as his friend reached out with the scissors and cut a strip out of the rope, letting it flutter away into the night with a laugh.

"Kosminski! Don't you -" Another little ribbon fell past him. He felt the rope give a jolt. "Aaron!" He started climbing faster, trying to leave as little distance as possible between himself and the ground below. "You'd better stop tha – Oh!" Suddenly, the sheet went slack and Jack felt himself falling "Jack!" Crying out, Kosminski flung himself half out the window, catching the shredded end of the sheet only to be pulled out after his friend.

Landing hard on his back, the Ripper lay stunned as Aaron dove head first into the weeds beside him, the useless end of their rope still clutched in his fingers. _What… _Above him, the moon was still shining in an open sky. He was free. He sat up, fixing his top hat and reaching for the medical kit. He wasn't sure if Kosminski was dead, but he hastily pulled a handful of stolen candies from his coat pocket and left them in the grass beside the madman. Then, grinning, the fiend of Whitechapel ran towards Fleet Street.

XXXXXXX

Killing people was so much easier than speaking to them. Sweeney's plans for the night had sprung so flawlessly into life exactly that it almost seemed that fate was working from his blueprints. Now all of his family – all those he would _make_ his family – were downstairs, waiting to be claimed as his, and that one step stopped him dead.

But he didn't need to say it all. He had the picture. It still sat on his little table, his Lucy's face showing peaceful through the blood that constantly stained the glass above her. And she would do the speaking for him.

He wondered as he reached his door how much Johanna knew already. Perhaps she would know her mother when she saw her. Or perhaps he could get Mrs. Lovett to give that painful explanation. Taking the key from his pocket, he leaned toward the door to unlock it, but stopped. It was already unlatched, letting the darkness inside the shop peer out through a narrow crack. _I must have forgotten to lock it when we left…_

He hesitated as he stepped inside, but the shop was empty. With a dismissing grunt, Sweeney shrugged off his bloody jacket and tossed it on the floor beside the little stove, long since gone cold. He stripped off his drenched black gloves, too, dropping them on the table and picking up a rag to wipe the drying gore from his skin. His picture frame lay open on the tabletop, not where he had left it. He picked it up, looking sadly for a moment at his lost wife, her portrait half-hidden by blood. He found a clean spot on his rag and made to dip it into the mug of soap, but found that it, too, was not where he left it. It was on the floor at his feet, shattered. He put down the pictures. _Someone has been here._

Backing toward the window, Mr. Todd scanned the room again, and felt all the rage of fifteen years ignite at once. Rising in the shadows behind his stove was Judge Turpin, sneering.

"Benjamin Barker." The judge stepped forward, his eyes locked on Sweeney's. There was a hatred in the old man's voice, as if the crime of being that man was worse than any he had judged. "Benjamin Barker…"

The razor was in Sweeney's hand before he realized he had reached for it, open and held high. Years and years of his darkest visions came to mind, and he grinned. He'd finally have to choose one. He leapt forward but froze again as Turpin only shouted out, "Bamford!" The lid to Sweeney's trunk flew open and struck the wall behind it, and the beadle stood, trembling. In his unsteady right hand, was a pistol trained on the barber.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sweeney saw a shadow race down Fleet Street and turn into Mrs. Lovett's courtyard. It was making for the shop, but he saw it stop beneath his window and look up. He saw that it saw him, and then it dropped the black bag it was carrying and veered away toward the stairs. Its steps came thundering up to his landing, just as Anthony had the last time the judge had come. Unlike that time, Sweeney was now at Turpin's mercy. And unlike that time, the shadow that burst through the door was not Anthony.

"Mr. Todd! You snake in the -" It was Jack the Ripper, drenched in blood. His pale face and white collar were soaked in it, and gore matted the hair beneath his old top hat. "Oh..." The beadle let out a shriek and swung the pistol to bear on Jack. As the shot went off, harmlessly shattering one of the door's glass panes, Sweeney leapt at Turpin, his silver razor flashing.

XXXXXXX

_I am not really happy with this chapter. Not only is it an unholy cliffhanger of death, it also feels like I could have done better. Oh well. I blame Kosminski._

_Thank you to everybody who reviewed. : ]_


	15. Chapter 15

**Kidney Pie: Chapter 15**

XXXXXXX

In the dark barber shop overlooking Fleet Street, the eerie silence of the night shattered into total chaos.

Judge Turpin dodged wildly as the Sweeney charged at him, the razor flashing through the air that still moved in the old man's wake. He scrambled unsteadily around the barber and whirled to face him, snatching the precious silver-framed portraits from the table and hurling them with a snarl at his opponent.

Across the shop, the two other men watched involuntarily, eyes and minds captured by the sudden movement as they processed the fact that battle had just broken out. It was Jack the Ripper who first sprung into motion, his blood-smeared face turning toward the Beadle and the revolver that shook in chubby fist. It wasn't until the Ripper leaned away from the door and leapt like a jumping shadow that Bamford finally managed to move.

With a trembling cry, the beadle tried to throw himself over the side of the trunk, but only managed to tumble helplessly onto the floor. The boards jarred his limbs and drove the breath from his lungs, but as his skull hit the wood, he felt the revolver kick against his hand as it went off again. Only feet from driving his blade home, the Ripper flung himself aside with a shout, landing slung half over the side of the open trunk. In the dark, Bamford couldn't tell whether the fiend had been hit or simply reacted to the sound. Scrambling, he kicked frantically at Jack's feet, writhing away as the killer tipped struggling into the box.

The beadle staggered to his feet. Behind him, he could hear the muffled thumps as Jack tried to right himself in the bloodstained confines of the box, cursing as he twisted. Panting, he slammed down the lid, and, panicking, ran for the farthest possible corner of the shop.

Turpin was barely ahead of this own opponent as he fumbled for something else to throw. His hand closed around the heavy leather strop, which flapped heavily as he swung it at the silver razor leaping out of the dark at him. Todd had stopped dodging the blows, charging straight through them, instead. Turpin felt his age more sharply with every step as he tried desperately to keep clear of the blade's arc. His breath creaked in his chest, his gray hair hanging over his brow. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard the beadle's footsteps crashing across the shop.

Gasping, Turpin staggered away of one more blow, escaping so narrowly that he felt the air shift against his neck. _"Bamford!" _He half threw his shoulders against the barber's side, half simply fell against him, momentarily throwing Sweeney momentarily off his balance. As quickly as he could Turpin ran. "Bamford! Shoot him! Shoot Barker!"

At this, Sweeney finally paused, turning toward this new threat. Across the shop, the beadle stopped, too, shaking, and spun to face the demon barber, who stood still with his razor raised, his black eyes glaring. The gun wavered in his grip as Bamford cocked it and drew his trembling aim. His finger rested on the trigger. The judge shouted again, hoarsely, to shoot.

Suddenly, a crash rang through the shop as the fallen lid of Sweeney's trunk flew open and slammed against the wall. The beadle screamed as Jack the Ripper sprang out again, and turned the gun away from the barber, firing instead into the wall behind Jack. And, as if that shot had been a signal, both fiend and demon charged again at their prey, Jack chasing the beadle and Sweeney Todd the fleeing figure of the judge.

Turpin was already making for the door, his hand still clutching the strop. He walked unsteadily and his breathing rasped in his throat, and these signs of weakness drew Todd on faster toward the victory they promised him. The old man made no attempt at self defense until he came nearly within arm's reach of his foe, finally turning. He barely avoided the razor as he lobbed the strop at the barber.

The leather struck Sweeney uselessly across the chest and fell. Scarcely pausing, the barber reached out with his free hand and shoved Turpin away from the door, away from the possibility of escape, hurling him towards the cold iron stove. The judge sprawled across its side with a pained shout before falling to the floor. He began to crawl to the far side of the stove as Todd stepped towards him again.

As the barber approached, the judge's searching hands found the bucket of coal that stood behind the little oven, and, seizing the pieces, flung them at his enemy. He couldn't tell in the darkness whether any of them had found their target, but he heard Todd's steps come steadily nearer. Trying to rise from the floor, he flung the whole bucket. Its contents scattered as it flew, and finally he was rewarded with a thump of metal meeting flesh. Sweeney faltered, stopped by the pain in his shoulder where the pail had struck him. But when he moved forward again, it was with twice the speed and fury. Razor high, he lunged at the figure behind his stove.

Before he brought the razor down, Turpin launched an attack of his own, lashing out with the barber's tea-kettle. Sweeney stopped, his arm batted aside, and staggered back, allowing the judge time for another blow. The teapot landed squarely in his side, and, as he stopped to regain his balance, Turpin darted past him and raced again for the door. But as the old man passed, Todd snatched his wrist as he lifted his blade again, forcing him back into the fight.

Across the shop, Jack the Ripper leapt at the beadle, snatching wrist of the hand that held the gun in his free hand – his awkward right hand struggling against the beadle's right wrist, while with his left he sought to plunge his knife into Bamford's back as the other man spun and tried to escape, screeching. The Ripper scowled, stabbing at the beadle's fleshy side with only enough success to a new scream of pain. "Shut up!" Drawing back his knife, he tried again, bearing down harder but missing. _"Stop bloody screaming!"_

Whirling in a panic, Bamford was conscious of little more than the bony fingers that clutched his arm and the terror than sat in his chest like a possessing demon. His side stung where the Ripper's knife had caught him, and, desperately, he tried to run from that same blade, spinning the pair in hopeless circles, but he couldn't shake the killer off. Neither could he gain enough control of the revolver to bring it to bear on the fiend behind him. Finally, he stopped trying to turn away from Jack and simply ran, only to trip, pulling the Ripper down behind him as both men careened into the ancient crib.

Falling against the beadle's back, Jack thrust his arm over Bamford's shoulder and cut across his chest, grinning as he felt the impact as the tip of his knife knocked against the official's ribs, but already, the blasted screamer was shaking him off. The fiend of Whitechapel rolled off, sprawling among the wreckage of the broken cradle, but held on the beadle's arm, forcing the gun away from him. Half-rising, Bamford tried to use his other hand to force the pistol down, cocking it to shoot.

Jack felt his arm shake. Dropping his knife, he pushed with both arms, letting out a growl. He had not run the miles from Fogg's asylum – the miles that, although they passed so quickly, now felt so much longer – had not fought and fallen his way out of that hell to be shot by some preening pig of a beadle. And yet the muzzle of that revolver dropped lower. Jack closed his eyes, and shoved. The gun fired, and the Ripper's battered top hat flew away, his pale face dusted with hot black powder, but he was unscathed. Alive with the thrill of survival, Jack the Ripper threw off his opponent and picked up his knife.

In the shadows near the door, Turpin swung the kettle too slow. Its weight hung too heavily on his aging arm. The barber hardly needed to dodge, stepping only slightly aside to bring the razor down at a different angle. Stumbling wearily away from that stroke, the judge only narrowly avoided that blade that bit at the sleeve of his coat, nipping greedily at his skin.

Turpin's shout of pain came out only as a startled huff. His shoulder crashed into the wall, the steel side of the teapot clanging against the wood as it swung back to his side. The razor flashed again, its sides a faint white presence in the dark, like its master's face, rather than an actual glimmer. The best Turpin could do was to raise a desperate hand to seize his enemy's wrist. Halting, the silver blade hung above his head, jerking and shaking in air as Todd tried to tear it back or force it down. The judge swung the teakettle again, aiming for the Sweeney's jaw, only to have his own arm seized in a crushing grip and his body thrown away from the wall.

Wrists locked, arms held like partners in some furious dance, judge and barber spun face to face, all hot breath and hostile eyes, straining like two dogs in the pits behind the warehouses along the Thames, like bare-knuckled fighters in the slums and prisons, like things from a world Turpin had only seen from the distance of his judge's bench. It was an animal contest, and he saw now in Sweeney Todd the stronger beast. His breathing came less ragged, the hatred in his black eyes undimmed by exhaustion or pain. Of the cowering, bewildered man Turpin remembered, nothing had survived but this pale, weathered corpse, possessed by a demon.

With a snarl, Todd threw aside his opponent's arm, the teakettle swinging helplessly away. His free arm darted between the pair to strike at Turpin's elbow, making the old man's trembling arm buckle. As the razor's silver edge slashed from cheekbone to jaw to collar, the judge knew that he had created the instrument of his own destruction, and that he would not leave that shop alive.

XXXXXXX

_Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been 1 year, 5 months, and 16 days since my last update. That's enough of a sin, right? And this isn't even that good! Way too long for a fight scene. I fail. :(_

_At any rate, I am continuing with this. It has not been abandoned. (Except of course for that aforementioned year and a half). But the rest of what I originally intended to be Capter 15 will probably keep coming in shorted chunks like this. Stay tuned, folks. And I am **really** sorry to let it slide so long. But not too sorry to beg shamelessly for reviews, which just might inspire me to write the next bit faster. Pretty please with pie crust and kidneys on top...?_


	16. Chapter 16

**Kidney Pie – Chapter 15-and-a-half**

From Ch. 14: _"__Mrs. Lovett felt the whole roomful of eyes fixed on her, and suddenly didn't like it. She turned back to Mr. Todd. "Well, don't suppose there's anything you'd like to say, is there, love?" The barber was silent, and for just an instant she could have slapped him for putting them through that, for locking up her Jack, and leaving her to make their explanations alone. But in his eyes, she saw a trace of the same sly intelligence he had used that evening. He looked at each one of them, judging. He intended something for their whole group, but she could almost swear that his eyes had rested just a little longer on her. Her anger vanished._

_"Yes." He was looking at Johanna, but let his eyes meet hers as he stepped back toward the door. "There is." He stepped out, making the bells sway again, and she heard his steps climbing the stairs to his shop…"_

The door swung shut behind Sweeney Todd, and the little bells above it sang cheerfully. All four faces inside the pie shop remained fixed on the door as their song faded into silence. No one spoke.

Finally, blinking in shock, Mrs. Lovett shook on open hand at the darkness behind her doorway, and said the only thing she could think of after such a night: "What in the bleeding hell!?"

At that, as if a dam had burst, questions began pouring out of every other mouth in the pie shop. And far too many of them were directed at her.

"Mum! Are you alright?" Toby leapt forward instantly to take her by the arm with his free hand, the other clutching something in his pocket. "You aren't hurt, are you? You're out of breath. Did you have to run? Was somebody following you? Mum, I think somebody's in the shop! What's happened?"

Toby, at least, spoke only at her. Johanna and Anthony clung to each other like burnt gravy to her cast iron pans, and the tangled questions that flew from them made the baker's head spin. "_Who…" "Are you alright?" "How did…" "Is she bleeding?" "Where am I?" "You aren't hurt?" "What's happened?" "What's happened!?"_

"What…?" Nellie was not one to be easily stricken silent, but she could hardly keep track of who was asking what of who, the questions came so fast, and all her own thoughts seemed to have swept out the door with Sweeney Todd. She looked at the lovers, at the door, at her counter left only hastily half-tidied as they'd left for Fogg's, and back at the door again. _Fine mess you left me to deal with, Mr. T!_

Her body shook as Toby gripped her arm and tugged. "Mum, there's someone here, there really is!" She didn't reply_. _

Instead, her gaze fell on the young couple standing in her kitchen. Johanna gripped Anthony's hand until her knuckles showed white beneath the blood while he shook her gently, trying to coax some sense out of her. Finally her dark eyes fixed on his face, and, through the daze of terror, she managed, "How – How do – _It's you…"_ Tears started down her cheeks as she said his name.

_First thing's first, then. _The girl, Mrs. Lovett judged, looked near the point of mental and physical collapse, and so the baker guessed her first necessary course of action, and launched again into her usual state of sound and motion. "You go on and sit her down, son. Nice and easy does it, now. She's had a bit of a rough night is all." _Probably takes after her father, poor little duck. _ A checklist started to draw itself in her mind. "Just there in the parlor will do nicely. There now, loves, everybody's going to be alright. Toby, be a dear and fetch us some water to get her cleaned up."

But, for probably the first time since she took him in, Toby disobeyed her, darting forward to tug at her arm again. "But, Mrs. Lovett, mum!"

"Tobias Ragg!" The baker cast him a sharp look as she pulled away. One uncooperative lump of a man she could deal with, but Mr. Todd had that one spot pretty well filled, and the night had not left her in the mood to deal with even him, let alone Johanna _and_ her slow-moving sailor, _and _her suddenly insubordinate Toby. "This ain't the time for foolishness, love. I need you to do like I told you, and no chatter. Quick now!"

"But we heard somebody in the shop upstairs, before you and Mr. Todd -"

"Hush, Toby, and get that water, love. There ain't nothing for you to worry about. Everything's -"

_CRACK!_

Mrs. Lovett stopped dead as the gunshot tore through the shop and all eyes leapt to the ceiling. The sound had definitely come from upstairs. Nellie felt like somebody had just whacked her heart a good stiff blow with a rolling pin. _Hell! _"Nobody move. I'll be right back." Skirts rustling, she started for the door, but, before she reached it, it swung open.

Nellie opened her mouth to rebuke Mr. Todd, who stood outside in the dark, when she realized that the man was not Mr. Todd at all. The stranger stepped forward unsteadily, stumbling heavily into the door frame, and Mrs. Lovett took a step back as he righted himself and staggered inside. Even Anthony and Johanna edged away, the girl hiding her bloody face in the lad's coat. Only Toby rushed forward, planting himself determinedly beside the baker.

The stranger, gazing bemusedly about the shop with glazed eyes, noticed none of this. He lolled his head in a nod toward Mrs. Lovett. "G'evening."

The baker blinked. "What-?" Dressed in a decent, if disheveled, suit, a bowler hat cocked askew on his head, the man would have to be a respectable sort, she supposed, if he didn't look as high as St. Dunstan's steeple. He didn't so much as blink as the ceiling above them burst out in a thunder of crashing and thumping. "Who're - ? Right, now, the shop's closed, love, you'll just have to come back -"

"Abberline." The man raised a shaky hand, smiling.

"What?"

"Sorry. 'Spector Frederick Abberline, with the Scotland Yard, in Whitechapel."

_CRACK!_

Another gunshot burst overhead. Nellie flinched, and she heard Johanna whimper behind her. Toby touched her elbow. Her heart beat hard. "Well, I can't help you now, sir. We're closed, and you'll really have to be going." The rumbling above continued. _If you get your bloody self killed, Mr. Todd… _"Ain't nothing around here needs any inspecting, not like in…" And suddenly, her blood ran cold. "Whitechapel? You ain't looking for…"

Abberline waved. "Jack the Ripper? Everybody's looking for Jack the Ripper these days."

Lovett stared as she thought carefully. _Of all the blooming times for the police to show up! _She took a breath, trying to steady herself. "Did you come in for a pie, then?"

"Pie?"

"Mum!" Toby tugged at her arm in disbelief.

She shook him off, taking hold of his sleeve and urging him back with her as she stepped blindly back towards her counter. Another bout of crashing from above struck her hard, and she felt almost faint. Making as if to steady herself, she swept her baking things off the counter. "Silly me, making all that noise." She laughed, but didn't look away from Abberline. "This _is_ a pie shop, sir. Surely there isn't any other reason to come in here, 'cept for a nice pie?"

"I…" The inspector jerked his head, surprised, then looked back at the half-open door. He looked quite confused as he turned back. "I… _would _like a pie. I think."

Nellie stamped her feet as she ran to the hearth, trying to cover the noise from the barbershop. As she stooped to pick up one of her leftover pies, she heard something shatter overhead, and another mighty _CRACK! _Her heart fluttered. Quickly, she kicked the metal pan, sending the last pies rolling in the ashes. "Whoops! The racket I make!" She glanced at him as she reached for a clean plate, then looked carefully away from him as she rounded the counter, turning to Anthony and Johanna instead.

Both their pale faces were fixed on the baker, their eyes wide. And Johanna was still all bloodied. Pausing for just a moment, she mouthed the words, "_Hide her!"_

Abberline still stood, vacant-eyed, when she turned back to him. She made herself smile. "Here you are, sir. Have yourself a nice cozy seat, and I've got your pie for you."

"Thank you, ma'am." The inspector nodded appreciatively, sleepily, as he sat down, nearly missing the chair. And he sat, naturally, at the table between Johanna and the door. Mrs. Lovett hoped the sailor wasn't daft enough to parade her all blood-soaked right past a bloody detective.

He wasn't. With a whisper, he bundled her into a seat at the far end of the shop and, sitting next to her, laid his own coat over her shoulders. They looked like any innocent pair of lovers, except for when the girl's terrified face could be seen between them. She needed taking care of, and a talking to, but it would have to wait.

"Here's your pie, then." She set the pie down quickly, placing herself between Abberline and the girl. "Not too hot this time of night, but I can promise you it's still the best you ever tasted." The sickly smell of opium rolled off him, and she almost winced away. _The bugger. _It didn't seem surprising, all at once, that Mr. Todd had locked up Jack before the police could collar him. "Anyway, you won't have to worry about waiting for it to cool off now, will you? Hate to keep you from your work, and all."

Abberline poked speculatively at the pie crust. "Quite alright, ma'am. I'm not in any particular hurry." The falling crumbs seemed to fascinate him, and Nellie could have reached out to shake him as he paused to nudge them about the plate. "At least, I can't recall being in any."

"Lovely, dear." Mrs. Lovett gripped the edge of the table, plastering a smile over her gritted teeth, and listened again to the sounds of running and pounding and crashing from Sweeney Todd's Tonsorial Parlor. She wished she'd listened to Toby. Although Mr. T had thrown some spectacular tantrums, there was far too much noise, and far too much gunfire, for her to think he was alone up there._ That boy ain't no fool. _"Best get some food down quick, though, love, 'fore you waste away."

She glanced at Toby, still standing beside her disordered counter, and found him looking back with his little jaw set and his eyes hard. No, he was bright enough. Nellie suspected he knew perfectly well that a cop in her kitchen was no comfortable thing. A chill ran through her. _No._ She wasn't going to lose Todd to the law or whatever else had been waiting upstairs, she wasn't going to hang, herself, and she wasn't going to lose Toby and the shop and all her longed-for success.

Another crash, another rumble of footsteps and muffled shouts, broke overhead. Abberline glance up. "I think, ma'am, you might have mice." The smell of smoke rose off him as he paused, looking at her hopefully. "I wonder, perhaps you also have gin?"

_CRACK! _

Nellie fought off the sudden image of her Sweeney staggering around shot full of holes. "Y-yes, sir. Just a tick." Her eyes met Toby's as she turned back toward the counter, and she steeled herself again. _If we get through this night, so help me God… So long as Mr. T's alive…_

Tobias, she noticed, still clutched something hidden in his pocket.

**XXXXXXX**

In the dim light, the blood that rolled down Judge Turpin's face looked like only darkness spilling from the cut, darkness on the edge of the razor. No red. A thrill shook Sweeney as he watched Turpin stagger back. The teakettle fell to the floor with a hollow _clunk._ The judge very nearly fell.

But he didn't quite. He bled, and richly, but he lived. And, Sweeney found, this did not dismay him. He _relished_ it.

In all his visions, he had never seen it end like this. He had imagined the judge dying a hundred ways in a hundred different places, but always, it ended quickly: sudden revelation, a single slice, a limp body dropping backward.

But he found himself recalling Benjamin Barker, shackled and afraid, standing before that bench sixteen years ago. Like a mouse trapped in a bottle.

He had imagined killing the judge, but never thought to reverse their roles so neatly.

Sweeney stepped between the judge and the door, watching the old man's face as the judge stumbled further back. It was a bloody face, open-mouthed with pain, grey hair disheveled. The silver razor, with its black-bloodied edge, flicked closed and back open. Todd stepped forward.

And Turpin stepped back. He didn't quite cower, but the barber didn't mind. He was still about to die. They both knew it.

The razor flickered, shut again and open again, with soft, steely _slick,_ the sound of his friend laughing. Its master advanced, casting only a quick glance sideward to where Jack and the beadle grappled over control of the revolver. He didn't know how the Ripper had escaped, but for the moment, he was convenient enough. It let Sweeney focus finally on his revenge.

He lunged, striking Turpin across the arm. A light blow, but the blood trickled from a tear in his coat sleeve as the judge scrambled further back into the confines of the shop. He staggered into the square of light beneath the window, and the moon threw the shadow of the wooden cross-pieces like the shadow of iron bars.

The razor chuckled – closed and open. Like it was licking its lips. Sweeney Todd smiled again. _Perfect._ He stepped forward again, driving the judge slowly before him. _Perhaps Mrs. Lovett was right. Good things _do _come to those who wait._

Todd frowned a moment, glancing again at Jack. He gripped his razor tighter as he leapt again. _Soon, all will be resolved._

**XXXXXXX**

Jack the Ripper had made a career of making a mockery of the law, and he had long since cast aside all fear of being caught, so it quite surprised him too see how hard it was to catch one slimy specimen of officialdom. He was the _fiend of Whitechapel_, after all, and Beadle Bamford was weak, terrified, and horribly out of breath. He did, though, have the pistol, Jack had to concede.

Jack darted again, swooping out of the shadows. The gun spun shakily towards him. He dodged, retreated. Bamford ran. Again. But Jack grinned. He drew closer with every duck and weave. And he quite enjoyed the thought of cutting this particular throat after this particular disaster of an evening.

When the beadle bolted for the chair, the Ripper ran only precious feet behind him, knife flashing. Jack reached out, leaning. His knife flashed in the moonlight falling from the window. But before he could plunge it home, Bamford darted around the side of the barber's chair.

Jack's feet slid on the floorboards as he stopped short and leaped after his foe, but the beadle kept turning, around the chair. It stood between them as they ran, turning into the light and out of the light as they raced through the bright square beneath the window. Jack couldn't quite reach far enough for a good stab. But neither did Bamford dare stop running long enough to shoot.

_You cursed, squealing little busybody! Hold still! _Jack leaned perilously as he raced around the chair, almost falling as he leapt forward, his knife nipping at Bamford's back, not quite close enough. _Anybody who goes sticking his nose in everyone else's business deserves to have it cut off!_

He laughed as he turned quickly, springing back in the other direction in hope of bringing the beadle face to face with his blade. Instead, he felt his shin meet abruptly with the sturdy foot-rest of the barber's chair, and he went sprawling.

All sense of mirth vanished as he hit the floor. _I am Jack the Ripper. _He scowled at the stained floorboards as he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. _And Jack the Ripper does not trip._

His grin quickly returned, though, as he started to rise. _Of course, it's critical now that no witnesses survive, Mr. Bamford._ He was halfway to his feet, when he heard the unmistakable _click _as the next bullet slipped into the chamber of the revolver. He dropped back down, flinching as he heard the mighty _CRACK! _rip through the air above him, and then, on knees and elbows, he crawled on, as swiftly as he could, on around the chair. _Perhaps I _do _trip, but I do _not_ give up while there's blood to be spilt!_

But, beyond his every expectation, he heard the Beadle's heavy footsteps continue around the chair, pursuing now. Jack scowled. Even a great, plodding cuss like Bamford could run faster than he could crawl. Quickly, he turned over, and found himself looking up at the back of the chair rising over him like a headstone, silhouetted before that massive window. And then, following close, the beadle's form appeared above him, his wide eyes white in the dark, and that gun pointed unsteadily down at his chest as two heavy boots clunked down on either side of the Ripper's body.

The pistol cocked. Jack's mind raced. His heart pounded. But, for the first time, the Ripper had run out of tricks. _Not possible! _ He had played the game so well. His knife was in his hand, and even now Bamford shook with fear. But, pinned beneath the sights of that revolver, he drew a blank. He felt sick, and rage boiled up in him. _Curse you, Sweeney Todd, and your women and your pies and your madhouse and your blasted chair-_

A giddy joy seized the fiend of Whitechapel. _The chair!_ On the floor near his head, he saw a lever. With flailing arms, he pounded it, grinning, desperate and gleeful.

The Ripper laughed as he felt the floor drop away beneath him. The shot rang out, but flew wild. The pistol tumbled away, and the beadle screamed. Jack was still laughing as Sweeney Todd's Tonsorial Parlor was swallowed up in blackness and both fell together.

**XXXXXXX**

The first shot, Sweeney Todd ignored. He leered as he dogged the judge's steps, herding him further and further back into the darkness of the shop. Turpin could retreat as far as he liked. There was no escape.

Blood trickled now down both the older man's sleeves, and one more deep gash marked his face. Sweeney could feel fresh, hot blood on his hands, and, after sixteen years of hate and misery, it was finally the very blood he had longed to shed. He grinned. He finally had the judge. And Turpin knew it, too.

_Sixteen years. _He shifted his grip on the razor. _I think it's time._

In the same instant he started to step forward again, he heard the clanking and growling of his precious chair. And then he felt a searing pain tear into his left arm, just below the shoulder. The _CRACK! _of one last gunshot burst through the shop, along with a wailing cry.

He half-turned, seeing his chair ratchet faithfully back into its proper place, leaving the barber shop empty, save him and the judge. And the judge, too, would soon leave the same way.

He snapped back, ignoring the blood running down his arm, in time to see the look of perfect horror that flashed across the judge's face. But that look faded in a moment. Turpin, seizing what might be his last opportunity, trusted to Todd's wound and distraction, and ran.

But Sweeney was faster. Their footsteps thundered under them. He drew closer at every stride. His razor flashed as he cut through the light below the widow.

With revenge consuming his mind, the barber realized too late that Turpin was no longer running to the door. He nearly fell on top of the judge as the older man dropped to the floor, snatching at something. He lost his balance; the silver blade missed his mark. And something struck him squarely above his eye. Sweeney Todd crumpled to the floor. _The revolver…_

He heard footsteps rising, and the hammer click. He heard the hammer fall and - Silence. _Empty?_

Something hard hit him in the side, and then the shop faded into blackness as footsteps raced past him for the door.

**XXXXXXX**

_Gah!_

_As usual, my apologies for not updating for two years. The next chapters should follow within a fairly reasonable time period. For once. Thanks for reading, and, of course, reviews are greatly appreciated. :]_


	17. Chapter 17

**Kidney Pie – Chapter Fifteen-and-Three-Quarters**

The air inside Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pie Emporium carried an electric charge. Toby could feel the jittery current skimming along all his nerves and making his hair stand on end. His heart pounded. He only couldn't tell how the baker herself could stand it. He stared at her, trying not to twitch from sheer nerves, as he tried to figure out how she could force herself to act as if everything was perfectly as usual.

Entirely normal to have detectives and madhouse fugitives and young lovers appearing suddenly in her kitchen, while guns went off upstairs. Toby had born a lot, but he couldn't take another second of this could-be danger to the lady who was as good as his mother.

And he couldn't do a thing about it.

"Go on and tuck in, sir." He stared as Mrs. Lovett planted herself directly between Abberline and the couple sitting further back in the shop. The small, dapper man from Whitechapel nodded like a drunk, and lazily, he turned to gaze around the shop. Her hand moved quickly, and she pushed the plate nearer. Toby didn't realize why, until that drooping head turned back toward the movement. "And you can get back nice and quick to your work."

"That's what you have to do," a boy had told him once in the workhouse. "If you want to pick a man's pocket, you get him to look someplace else first." Toby had never stolen anything. He guessed even the workhouse was better than jail. But the idea had impressed him that a boy could make a man see or not see something. Mrs. Lovett knew what she was doing. But of course she did.

Toby shifted, brushing his shoulder against the counter, knocking a wooden spoon its owner had knocked askew to the floor. His eyes never left the two at the table. Mrs. Lovett was like that, he knew. She always kept moving, and quickly, but he knew she was always thinking even quicker. And she was awful clever, even if she didn't often show it to little boys like him, and he knew it. Sometimes, he felt like she could work magic, if she wanted. He loved her for it. It was too bad she wasted it tangling up with the likes of Mr. Todd.

"Work?" Abberline blinked owlishly as he contemplated the pastry before him. "Work's nothing special, I'm afraid." He took a bite, chewing slowly. "I wake up, people shout at me, I have weird dreams, things get worked out."

No one might have said anything to him, but Toby wasn't stupid. He heard things, and he'd seen enough to know that Sweeney Todd made Pirelli look like a saint. Jack, he suspected, did the same for Mr. Todd. Gin didn't work quite so fast as Mrs. Lovett thought it did, and he wasn't deaf. The two of them killed people, and nothing else could possibly explain it all. He couldn't convince himself that he was wrong. And how was he to know whether the pair of them were bright enough to leave the evidence against them someplace safe and far away? How many they'd done in, he never figured out, or worse, where they'd hidden then? Even if the Ripper left those women lying where he found them, what about Todd? What about the people he never saw leave the shop upstairs? Where could they possibly be buried? Or were they still here?

And how was he to trust that the police would be particular about nabbing decent folk who just happened to be nearby, innocent and trusting.

Decent folk like Mrs. Lovett.

He watched her as she leaned over the table, her eyes on Abberline, except when she glanced upward again.

Abberline waved the pie at its maker. "This is the fourth time this week I've been hauled into a carriage and swept off to do God knows what with God knows who. Comes with the territory." He paused, licking his lips, and brushed crumbs from his tidy moustache. "My God, that's a good pie."

Toby scowled. The detective made him sick, and he clenched his fists tighter. The boy could smell the reek of his drugs even from across the room. Enough people in the world just looked away from all the bad things what happened, and here's the man supposed to be stopping them, staggering around worse than drunk, stuffing his face with meat pies.

_Don't know why she can't bring herself to throw trouble out on its ear._ He watched her fiddle with the glass and the half-gone bottle of gin.

"My, ain't that sweet of you." The baker's eyes shot upwards again. "Must be nice to get a decent meal for a dreary ol' night's duty, I'm sure. And a nice tot of something to warm your bones." He could hear the scheming in her voice, the way she spoke when her thoughts were running ahead of her words to some other end. As they all too often were. He supposed she didn't know how obvious it was, but he could tell when she set to scheming. _Or, not even scheming_ …

She glanced again towards the barbershop overhead. _Dreaming. _Dreaming of that barber, for some reason he couldn't imagine.

Toby's own gaze leapt up as another bout of crashing broke didn't particularly care about Sweeney Todd. If he were dead, it would only keep his mother the safer. But only if she didn't have to hang for what he'd done. Or if he were alive, he might come make himself useful, and handle this mess. Or would he come down still as soaked in blood as if he'd been rolling in it, and parade himself right in and get them all arrested? His palm felt damp and clammy against the handle of the closed knife.

Abberline's reply – possibly, "Quite" – was smothered by a mouthful of pie. Toby watched him set his pie down slowly, clumsily. He could almost envision the thoughts drifting, butting shoulders, spinning lazily apart again behind the bloodshot eyes. "Nice, you know, to get a bit of respect, a little bit of a sit-down, not being pulled about all the time and expected to go arrest a butcher or whatever."

_Or a barber? _Toby stared, listening to the thumping above. _Maybe they're putting him in chains right now?_ He tried to quell a shudder, in spite of himself. It was what he'd often hoped for, to see the barber taken too far away to ever hurt the baker. But _that_ would hurt her.

And in his mind, he watched her, surrounded by dark-coated constables, trying to explain that she never had anything to do with any of it, that she had no idea, even though it had all been done in her own house, even though it had been going on for so long. And even in his own ears, he knew how feeble her excuses would sound.

"Got your hands full, no doubt." Mrs. Lovett brushed crumbs from the tabletop, but Toby watched her look again at the ceiling, and then again, only half listening. He could sense, too, the quick combinations of her own thoughts. "Bloody mess..."

A cry sounded out above them, and every head turned up to look. There came another and then a heavy thump. Toby turned quickly back to the shop, watching his mother's face. And it surprised him, because he thought he saw a shadow of something like fear there. And she was never afraid, too clever to let anything slip out of her control.

The only one unaffected was Abberline, licking gravy from his fingers. "What, because of the Ripper, you mean, miss?" He reached for the gin, his hand maddeningly slow. His other hand fumbled in his pockets. "Already solved."

At that, Nellie's eyes snapped back to the stranger. "What's that?"

Toby stared, too, and he felt his heart pound harder. Slowly, he drew out his hand and wiped his sweating palms on his trousers. _Not here… So long as they catch him anywhere but here. _His mind raced. Jack had been with them when they left. He was gone when they returned. They might have caught him just now, alone, wherever he ran off to. _They never need to know he was mixed up with any of us. _But then, what were the odds they just happened to trip over him tonight? Why would the police be here, if he hadn't at least been seen with her or Mr. Todd?

The detective drank. "'Fraid nothing will come of it, is all. Freemasons."

Toby almost shook from relief. And he saw Nellie ease just a bit.

And then another _CRACK!_ sounded from above them, and she flinched like she'd been kicked. She reached for the table's solid support.

Toby let his own free hand touch the counter's side as he watched her. He knew she loved Mr. Todd. He thought there was something else between them, besides the rooms she lent him, and the rest, something that kept them closer, even when the barber treated her so cold. He didn't like it. He didn't trust Todd. But he watched the strain growing in Mrs. Lovett's face.

He hated it. It wasn't even about Mr. Todd, although he couldn't fathom why she bothered with him. It was the same thing it had been his whole life. It was going to the workhouse because where else can you go. It was taking Pirelli's abuse, because he had no other choice. It was laying quietly on the baker's couch at night thinking that Sweeney Todd had taken in more customers that day than he'd ever sent back down, and knowing there was nothing a nobody orphan could do about a thing in the world.

It was always the same. But now, he had Mrs. Lovett. And he couldn't bear to see her taken from him.

But what could he do?

He felt the sweat forming on his forehead, and the droplets on his scalp reminded him of Pirelli's stupid wig. He clutched the knife.

"Shame." Her fingers clamped around the edge of the table, Mrs. Lovett turned to look at Toby. She could keep her face pretty calm, he knew. She was like that. But around her eyes, it kind of unraveled, and he could see her looking distant, and scheming. And worried? Toby bit his lip. It wasn't like her. "Now, my lad, why don't you get a wet rag and go see to them tables over there."

He followed the direction of her nod to the other table and saw the girl, with blood smeared in her yellow hair. Toby swallowed hard. He had no idea whatsoever who that girl was, or how the sailor knew Mr. Todd, or what any of them were doing in the shop. Worse, he couldn't guess what had happened at the madhouse. Except, evidently, that somebody had bled a lot. That somebody, he imagined, was probably dead._One more thing we'll hang for, like enough._ Unless, perhaps, that somebody was the suddenly absent , he darted around the counter to get a rag, dunked it in the cold water for dishes, and brought it directly to Anthony and his friend.

The sailor took it carefully, looking at him gratefully as he mouthed, "_Thank you." _Gently, he began to wipe the sticky red from her face, but it still streaked her hair, and one big, scarlet hand-print marked the sleeve of her dress. _Mr. T's, no doubt._

He studied the Anthony. The lad had rough hands, and if he was a sailor, Toby guessed he had a grip that could crush a man's throat. But if it should come to a fight, if the chaos overhead should spread to the pie shop, he doubted Hope would stand against an officer of the law. If that's even who was up there. He watched that rope-roughened paw dab tenderly at the blood on Johanna's face.

_Perhaps they'll blame him, not us._

Still watching the sailor, he listened to the detective.

"I solved it with my dreams." Abberline held up his empty glass. "Do you mind, ma'am?" He unwrapped a packet of crumpled paper from his pocket; matches, sugar cubes, a scorched spoon, a small green bottle nestled in its folds. "I have premonitions, you know."

Nellie frowned. "Keep drinking that and I'm sure you will." She refilled the glass.

A second shot rang out, and the grinding and thumping within the walls of the pie shop that were all too familiar. Quickly, Toby threw over one of the chairs, pretending to trip. "Sorry, mum. Awful clumsy tonight."

Abberline ignored him. "I can see you on a beach, serving little cakes with pink frosting." The spoon he laid across the glass, the sugar cube in the cradle of the spoon. "Man and a boy there." And three careful drops of bitter-smelling laudanum he measured onto the cube. "And an iguana in a satin waistcoat." He struck a match.

"Warms my heart to hear that, dear."She looked down as Toby slipped back to her side, then both of them looked up as another chorus of pounding hammered the boards above them. And both, for a moment, remained looking up: Mrs. Lovett at the ceiling, and Toby at her. His eyes still clung to her face as she looked down again and forced a smile. "Might as well go have yourself a rest in the parlor, son, and take it easy, alright?"

Toby paused, staring back at her. He couldn't quite remember seeing her like this. Couldn't remember seeing her afraid. He knew she was a tough lady, but he could see it around her eyes. And he knew it was Mr. Todd she was afraid for, because she had to know what was happening to him. Like Toby had to know what was going to happen to her. It shook him. He hesitated, drew a nervous breath, and didn't look away. "No, Mum."

On the far side of the table, Abberline nodded over the blue flame that rose from his glass. His spoon tipped out like a trap door from under the concoction it held.

Finally, Toby turned his face from hers. "I'll take care of the gin for you, Mrs. Lovett."

He snatched the bottle and ducked quickly away, her call smothered behind him from a drum-roll of footsteps in the barbershop. The noise ended in one awful, heavy _THUMP!_ as he reached the sailor's table. He didn't find the quiet comforting. Silently, he passed the bottle to the girl, ignoring Anthony's stunned expression. Johanna ignored it, too. She picked up the bottle like she didn't know how and drank, choking in surprise as she swallowed. Anthony picked it up as she set it down, took a quick sip, and the passed the bottle back to Toby.

The boy glanced upward into the sudden silence, and drank.

_He could be dead_. Toby set the bottle down, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve. His eyes stayed on the ceiling, waiting. _But who'd be left alive?_

Carefully, Abberline swallowed down the hot liquid. "The whole thing's quite a shame, about the Ripper, that is. What with the dead girls and all."

Mrs. Lovett was no longer listening. The only footsteps now were hers, marching across the shop to her counter. When she turned again to the Inspector, she had her rolling pin in hand. But she stopped, staring at her helper. Toby stared back. She had a wild sort of look. She couldn't take it anymore. He knew it. She had to do something.

And she wanted him not to see it. That's why she wanted him to go sit. That's why she was always giving him the bottle and sending him to bed. Like he couldn't hear or guess. He wasn't stupid. She looked at him like she was daring him to say she shouldn't do what she was about to.

Toby didn't care. He didn't care if she killed him. He reached for the knife in his pocket again.

"I could tell you the whole story, you know. About the Free… I mean, the Freemasons…"Abberline's head lolled back against the back of the chair. His eyes closed slowly as the laudanum hit him. He didn't stir as Nellie strode back to the table."But then the Ripper might drop by himself… Don't want nobody to know… And they're killing all of them, the women." Toby couldn't look away. The rolling pin swung high. "You wouldn't want the Ripper here, Mrs."

And the detective opened his eyes. _WHACK!_ The pin fell, hard enough that Abberline's body jerked as it connected with his forehead, and he was still.

Toby flinched as she brought the rolling pin down a second time. Better safe than sorry, he remembered her saying once.

Toby felt his heart pound. His hand clenched. His thumb rested on the catch of the knife, and he wanted very badly, all of a sudden, to see the blade spring out again. He wanted very badly to see to it that nothing bad would ever come near his mother again.

The rolling pin rose again, and hovered, as its wielder looked almost frantically around the shop. "I'll be back. Don't nobody go anywhere. I just – I'll just…"

But the sound of footfalls came again, and she froze. Toby stared. The footsteps were no longer overhead. He nearly jumped when Johanna cried out, "There's someone on the stairs!"

**XXXXXXX**

In the darkness of the barbershop, the light of the moon shone down from above him, and the wooden sashes of the window cast intersecting shadows like prison bars. The air was cold, but Judge Turpin's skin burned with the heat of exertion and of his own blood coursing down his face. He panted, and staggered, trying to catch his breath. But he lived!

He pressed a sticky hand to his chest and felt his own heart beating, draining out more blood from the gashes in his face and arms, as he stepped away from the figure before him. The still form of whatever creature wore Benjamin Barker's face, lay on the floor before him. He did not think that Sweeney Todd was dead, but he didn't move.

But Turpin lived, and the door stood unlocked and unguarded, waiting only for his breathing to steady. But he looked anxiously around the shop. In this place, where chairs came growling to life and devoured men, even a corpse – even the walls and floor of this nightmare place – could swallow him up.

But nothing stirred in the corners of the shop. He looked around again, and then up, at the great, wide window with its crisscrossing bars. All he saw above him was the glass, flecked with spots (_Would they be red in better light?_), and, far above, the full moon, round and white and mottled, hanging over the shop like an eye.

The moon looked down on _him_, the cold, white eye of an eternal judge.

A familiar bit of scripture struck him, but in a new, unsettling way. It was a verse he had often used to admonish the criminals before his bench. But that was all. There was no call for the words, "_Be sure your sins will find you out_" to ring suddenly, ominously through his mind.*

No call at all.

The judge coughed, wheezing. He couldn't breathe. It didn't matter. He only had to leave that shop. His coachman would still be waiting in the street. In less than an hour, he would have the full strength of the London police force descending on Fleet Street. He could do it. Sweeney Todd would pay for his crimes. He'd make sure of it.

Staggering, he made for the door, but outside the moon shone even brighter, illuminating the blood on his hands. He could feel it all over, hot, running down his arms and face. His gashes burned. The moon looked down. For one absurd moment, he hoped the framed photographs he had thrown at Todd hadn't fallen open someplace where that light could touch them.

Turpin froze. _And if Barker comes to trial again, what else might he say before the jury? _He stared out, not seeing the rooftops across the street and beyond. There were, he knew, men who had spent long years serving the city. He knew one grey-haired sergeant who, if he found that picture, would remember the couple behind the glass. And there were others.

The judge gulped at the cold air.

_What a terrible coincidence._ That shop, that man… Just as he had moved to seize Johanna as he had her mother, he reappeared, the same dark building, the same face. It had found him again. It had bent his pathway back toward Fleet Street, back towards this monument to his own wickedness.

Behind the open door, the specter called Sweeney Todd still lay silently. _Damn the beadle for wasting bullets! _It could have ended. It _should _have ended.

But the moon stared. And that bit of a half-verse echoed through his mind again.

"_Be sure your sins will find you out…"_

Judge Turpin ran.

The stairs flew under him, but when he reached the ground, he stopped, looking wildly about. Between him and the coach there lay the whole courtyard washed in that accusing light. He turned, frantic, toward the accursed pie shop. And in its dingy windows, he saw yellow hair. _No._

He should have bolted for the carriage. He should have bolted sixteen years ago. But he tore at the doorknob and threw himself inside. There was Mrs. Lovett herself, standing over the limp form of Frederick Abberline, looking up in horror at him. There was a young lad jumping forward. And the sailor; he knew it. And there – _No!_

Something exploded in the judge's mind.

He was aware only dimly of charging across the pie shop. Of the chairs toppling as Hope stood to protect Johanna. He didn't notice at all the young boy pulling something from his pocket.

He saw himself grab the baker's arm as she tried to block his path. He saw his free hand snatch the rolling pin she brandished at him, his fingers still bloodied.

But the center of the whole scene – Johanna, _his _Johanna – filled his mind, her face, white as china, smudged with blood, her golden hair in disarray.

Then, a sharp click, a sudden burning pain in his back. Turpin half-turned as he fell to his knees, and there was the baker's apprentice behind him, bearing down on him again with the switchblade knife.

And the judge collapsed finally to the dusty floor of Mrs. Lovett's pie shop.

**XXXXXXX**

Far away, Sweeney heard voices, muffled: an uproar, things breaking, light voices shouting. They sounded from behind a wall someplace. Or rather, from beneath the floor, cold against his cheek, and cold against his aching head, although his hand lay in something wet and warm.

_The floor?_ He blinked at the razor that lay before him. _Why the floor? Imagine if the judge should come and –_

_The judge! _Todd scrambled upright, ignoring the tearing pain in his arm. The shop lurched and rolled around him like the _Bountiful_ at sea. He nearly fell, but the door was open before him, and, focusing on that open patch of night, he staggered on.

_He can't escape. _He clutched his razor as if it could hold him up. If the judge lived, it would mean the gallows. They would need to run. Immediately. They would lose everything. No revenge, no life by the sea, nothing. _He can't escape._

Beneath him, he heard a voice say the same thing. "If he gets out of this shop alive, we're all dead."

_No! _Snarling, he lunged at the door. The bells rang. They were still ringing when he reached the railing above his stairs and stared into the courtyard. The _empty_ courtyard. His fingers clenched around the wooden rail, and the bells still rang behind him.

Or, below him now, as warm light spilled into the dark, and a shadow, as Mrs. Lovett's door flew open. She dashed out, but stopped at the foot of the stairs.

"Mr. Todd?"

"Mrs. Lovett." There was silence for a moment, and Sweeney leaned into the rickety railing, trying to breath in enough cold air to clear his head.

Her footsteps started quickly up the steps, and then her face leaned in close to him. "Mr. T, what happened?" Her hand covered his own on the rail; her other touched his wounded arm, and he hissed with pain.

He flinched away, standing upright. "The judge!"

"I know. He's in my shop, bleeding all over my floor." She deftly slipped her arm over his shoulders as he swayed a little. "What happened to _you_?"

He sagged against her as relief and joy hit him. "Stray shot. Be alright." As he stepped toward the stairs she moved with him, and down they went, carefully. He supposed he ought to stop to see how bad he was hit. "Johanna?"

"She's fine, love." Nellie's hip jostled his as they drew nearer to the square of yellow light below. "Wouldn't let nothing happen to her after all that trouble."

Sweeney felt steadier by the time his feet touched the cobblestones of the yard, and it struck him that this was the end. Everything he'd wanted, everything he'd been working for and killing for, was just inside the pie shop's door. The end of all of it. The thought supported him. "And you, Mrs. Lovett?"

Her arm slipped off his shoulders as she faltered. "I'm alright, Mr. T." With the bells jangling quietly, he passed into the light and noise inside, Nellie drifting behind him.

"Mr. Todd?" Anthony turned to look, and Sweeney's eyes fell on him first. The bandages still covered one side of his face, red splotches seeping into the cloth from underneath, and he seemed uncertain. But he stood, the barber saw, between Johanna and the bleeding figure on the floor. An odd feeling seized him about the heart as he stepped in nearer. "Are you alright, sir?"

"Fine." He half-glanced at Johanna, in the booth behind the sailor's back. She still had red streaks on her face and in her hair, and she was terrified. He frowned. But he wouldn't let anything threaten her again.

Sweeney moved farther into the shop and found Tobias standing at the counter's end. The boy looked up at him. The barber never thought much of the lad, but in that one look he found suddenly relief and dislike and a world of confusion. Toby's hand held a knife, and his sleeve had blood on it. Sweeney's hand brushed Toby's shoulder as he approached. "Good lad, Toby."

And there, at his feet, lay Judge Turpin, breathing still, but beaten. "Good lad."

He leaned down, scowling, to grasp Turpin's shirt collar with both hands, still clutching his razor. His head felt stuffed with fire as he stooped, and pain ran up his arm, but he hauled Turpin to his feet. Already, the breath rattled in the judge's chest. Sweeney stared hard. The old buzzard might be dying, but he had breath enough yet to suffer. "Mrs. Lovett, the bakehouse door, please."

Nobody spoke, not even Mrs. Lovett as she went to the heavy door and pulled it open, its edge rasping on the floor. Sweeney looked around the shop again, at all the faces regarding him fearfully. He faltered. "It'll… It'll be alright." _Will it? _He had no idea what else to say. He had never pictured even only Mrs. Lovett present to see him kill the judge, never mind his Johanna, or white-hearted Anthony, or the boy, all giving their silent, nervous consent. His mouth felt dry, suddenly. "Be alright in just a minute."

Turpin offered no resistance as Todd dragged him to the stairs; it was all he could do to stay upright. Slowly, painfully, Sweeney brought him to the head of the stairs, while the eyes behind them watched. With a great shove, the barber threw him down, watching the hoarsely screaming body tumble down the dusty steps.

He felt too tired to smile, panting at the head of the stairs, but he fingered his razor. With a glance at Nellie, waiting beside the door, Todd stepped down into the darkness.

Her voice called out behind him, "Stay here, loves," and her footsteps followed him down into the darkness. "We'll be back in a tick."

Sweeney supposed it was best that she did come after him; he was already feeling unsteady again by the time his feet reached the stone floor of the cellar. He could almost sense her hovering just behind him, waiting. As she had been that day he returned. As she seemed always to be. _Never, ever thought… _He swayed a bit and lost track of what he was thinking, but his chest seemed to swell with that strange sensation again. Or perhaps that was the effect of blood loss. _Really ought to see about that arm…_

He picked up the judge again, devoting all his effort to keeping them both upright. "The oven door." Mrs. Lovett's shoes clicked on the stone floor as she crossed quickly behind him.

The yellow light of the flames hit them as Todd dragged his victim across the bakehouse, and it revealed a face already paling, eyes already dimming. The fight had left him, and Turpin followed helplessly, like a mouse, thoroughly broken, in the cat's paws. Sweeney stared as they neared the oven. _It suits._

His wounded left arm screamed as he freed the razor. He grimaced at the pain, but, gritting his teeth, he grinned as he pressed the blade against Turpin's throat, savored the moment, while the last dregs of his enemy's life ebbed, waiting only on the last stroke to be released.

He made one, swift slice. The rubies flew, hot on his hand and face. Todd almost laughed. _It's finally, finally finished. _And with a single heave, he threw the dying judge into the fire. _It's over._

A moment passed before Mrs. Lovett shut the door with a resolute _clang_, and plunged them both into darkness. Mr. Todd felt his body finally waver. She stepped nearer.

"You did it, Mr. T." She touched his side, carefully stepping closer. "You finally got him, and your Johanna, too. You finally done it all."

"Yes." He took a dizzy step towards her. His mind reeled with the heady combination of fulfillment, blood loss, longing, and concussion, and, as he lurched forward, Mrs. Lovett seemed suddenly so very, very close. He flung his arms over her shoulders. "Finally have everything I wanted…"

"Mr. Todd?" Both her hands now gripped his sides, clutching at the fabric of his vest, and her voice was thick with emotion. Sweeney heard pride, and disbelief, and – Was that even love? He could hear her heart pounding as his head lolled against her chest.

That was because his knees finally gave out from beneath him. Suspended by his arms around her, and hers around him, he sighed into the neckline of her dress. _Don't get too excited, Mrs. Lovett._

"Mr. Todd! Oh, bugger." Nellie shook him, calling. "Mr. T? What – _Who's that over there!?_"

But Sweeney Todd didn't answer, as he sank happily, again, into oblivion.

**XXXXXXX**

_*The only slightly misquoted back-half of Numbers 32:23, "But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out." _

_Timeliness may not be my strong point, but I did make it in less than a year, this time. It's a start. Actually, I hope to have the next installment up within a few weeks, if all goes well. In the mean time, though, reviews=life._

_Thanks for reading, as always. :)_


	18. Chapter 18

**Kidney Pie – Chapter Fifteen-and-Seven-Eighths**

"Jack?"

_What the hell? _Jack shook his head as something nudged him awake. He lay on rough stone, and he could smell filth and slaughter. And he felt as if he had been thrown from a carriage and then trampled repeatedly by the entire Whitechapel police force as he lay in the street. His head throbbed terribly. "Ugh…"

As he tried to lift his hand to his head, it dawned on him that the only the thing that hurt worse than his head was his arm. Blinking and cursing, he tried to sit up, only to find Mrs. Lovett leaning over him, looking anxious.

"You alright, love?"

"Yes, I'll be -" He tried to rise, but fell back dizzily as her face blurred above him. "Oh."

Her hands steadied him. "Take it easy, then. I guess you just about tried to bust your silly head open across my bakehouse floor. All better now?" He stared up at her, and, past her, at the brick-lined passageway up to the barber shop. "Looks like Beadle Bamford was good enough to break your fall a bit. Probably dead before he hit the ground, the bugger."

Jack glared at the bleeding lump beside them that had been the unlucky official, his knife still sticking in its side. "Lucky him."

"I'm sure." She hovered beside him, and Jack could sense an impatient energy about her. It gave him the distinct feeling that she'd like nothing better than to drag him up off the floor immediately. Jack's head throbbed. He wanted to no part of her hurry. "What the hell happened up there, anyway?"

"That wretched Beadle is what happened, and some other fellow." Carefully, he propped himself up on his good arm, as she backed away a step or two. "And if that blasted barber is still alive, I'll cut his miserable throat for him!"

"Oh, no, you won't, now! Come on, I'll help you up." He pulled his hand back quickly as she reached for his wounded arm. "Don't tell me. Not you, too?"

The Ripper pushed back his coat sleeve before carefully probing at the aching place in his arm. He winced, hoping it was only bruised, but he could feel the rising heat and swelling even through his sleeve, feel the grating pain. "I think I might've broke it. My good hand, too."

"That's alright. We'll get you sorted out quick." He caught that restless sense again, a note of breathless worry in her voice as she spoke. She ducked behind him, slid her hands under his arms and hauled the Ripper upright. Jack swayed just a little as he found his feet. "Alright? Now come on. I need you to help me with Mr. Todd."

Jack stopped short, leaning back against her guiding hand. "Oh, no! I don't think so, Eleanor."

"Jack!" She struck him lightly, pushing him harder toward the oven, were he could see his rival laying on his back in a puddle of blood. _Hope it's all his._ "He's been _shot_! I need your help to get him upstairs."

"Leave him right there. That way when he bleeds out, you won't have to drag him back down again."

"Jack the bleeding Ripper! What's the matter with you!?"

"He locked me in a _madhouse!_"

"You ain't in a madhouse now, are you?" Plowing ahead, Nellie tugged him on by his good arm, ignoring him as he scowled and pulled his bad arm close to his chest. "We can sort that out later. Just help me, love." Her next tug jerked at his broken bones and he followed reluctantly.

Mrs. Lovett knelt to lift her tenant to a sitting position, her skirts trailing in the blood on the floor. Jack watched, glaring. A small, round hole punched in the barber's arm bled steadily into the dark pool around him. The result of Bamford's stray shot, he supposed. _Better him than me._ Stepping forward, he knelt carefully on his rival's left, wincing as Nellie slung the wounded arm over his shoulder, hot and wet with blood. With his good arm, he reached around to Todd's other side. "The things I do for you, Eleanor."

To his right, Nellie pulled Sweeney's other arm over her shoulder. "I appreciate it, dear. Now, quickly, one, two, _three!_"

As they both dragged him to his feet, Todd let out a strangled groan and stirred. Jack supposed, with a sense of bitter satisfaction, that his foe had to be in agony. _Might have been kinder to leave him lying after all_. But Sweeney rolled his lolling head to glare groggily at the Ripper. "You still alive?"

"Livelier than you are, boss." Jack pulled the barber close against his shoulder, his left arm cradled close to his chest and his teeth gritted against the sudden pain. "And don't you look so clever yourself, when you got beat by an old man without so much as a walking stick."

"Boys and their squabbles!" Mrs. Lovett gave a little grunt, trying to shift herself to support Sweeney more securely. "My knees ain't what they used to be, Jack. Help me get him to the stairs." Carefully, the three started their painful, staggering way across the bakehouse.

Behind Todd's back, Eleanor's arm crossed over his own. "When we get up to the shop, Jack, I'm going to need you to help me again. He's got a bullet in his arm. Just please tell me you're a bloody doctor or something."

Todd stumbled, between them as they started up the stairs, his knees buckling under the load of sheer pain. The impact jarring Jack's arm. "Don't need no doctor."

The Ripper snarled as he pulled the barber upright again. "Good, 'cause I'm _not _a doctor. I'm a _Ripper_. Though I'd be happy enough to work on him in that capacity, if you like."

"Jack!" Mrs. Lovett glared at him from around Todd's other side. "He's bleeding like - For all the bloody …"

"I don't need a doctor!"

"Hush now, Mr. Todd. Don't you worry." Mrs. Lovett panted beneath her tenant's weight as the three climbed. She glanced again at Jack. "Ain't you supposed to have medical knowledge?"

"Medical knowledge?" Despite the pain in his arm, the Ripper allowed himself a grim smile. "I can find you a gallbladder in the dark with my eyes shut and one hand round her throat." They cleared the top step.

"Good. Then you won't have no trouble, will you?" The light in the shop stung Jack's eyes, but Mrs. Lovett only nodded toward a table in the corner. "Over there, love, away from the window."

The kitchen, to Jack's surprise, was full, with the baker's lad and the sailor and a pale and bloodied girl that could only have been Johanna all staring nervously at them. Another man, well-dressed and vaguely familiar, lay slumped over a table. Turning from their spectators, Jack followed Eleanor's lead toward the table.

She ducked out from under Sweeney's arm as they drew near, ignoring the glare the two killers shared as she left them to prop each other up. Quickly, she pulled out the chair nearest the wall. Grimacing, Jack coaxed Todd over to it, and then dropped him carelessly into the seat. "There, and be welcome." Kicking out the next chair over, Jack sat down himself, scowling at his rival.

"Play nice, boys." Nervously, Mrs. Lovett ran her hands over the barber's shoulders. "Alright. Anthony, you go and get Johanna sat down in the parlor. Then I need you to come and watch Abberline."

"_Abberline?"_ The Ripper started in spite of himself, wincing as the motion jarred his arm, and turned for another look at the man slouched over the table near the door. "I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what _he's_ doing here?"

"Drooling into one of my meat pies, at the moment. Don't worry. Toby, bring me a good, full bottle of gin, and … Jack, what do you need?"

"I need one good reason why I shouldn't rip him to pieces, that's what." He met her glare with a scowl of his own, but held it for only a moment before he looked away angrily at the table-top. "There's a bag I stole from Fogg's. Dropped it just in the yard, I think."

"Toby, find it quick if you can." The others scurried off, Toby for the door and Anthony carefully coaxing Johanna into the next room, leaving only the baker and her men, and Abberline slumped over in his pie.

"I suppose I'll need bandages, too, or something."

Todd glared blearily around him, nodding with exhaustion. "What you need is to leave me alone."

Nellie slid her hands anxiously over Sweeney's shoulders. "I'll get them. Let's just…" A note of longing crept into her voice as her hands slipped hesitantly, reverently down toward the buttons of Todd's waistcoat. "I suppose we'll have to get this shirt off him…"

Jack spared her a grim look before he curtly snatched the bloody sleeve and tore it quickly away, the fabric ripping where the bullet had rent it. "Bandages, Eleanor."

She blinked, cast a hesitant look at the Ripper, and then stepped back. "Back in two shakes, love."

Jack watched her go, and gingerly rested his broken arm on the table-top. Then, fighting to make his clumsy right hand cooperate, he prodded casually at the wound. About a handbreadth above the elbow, the single hole looked neat enough, aside from the free-flowing blood. He supposed the bullet had lodged in the barber's arm. It was hard to see through the blood, and difficult to feel anything under the tense muscle, but he probed for that hard lump he knew was hiding there. "Just up against the bone, I should think." Jack pressed his palm firmly over the gash, trying to staunch the bleeding. "Have to get that bullet out before we patch you up, old boss."

"No." Sweeney spoke through gritted teeth, trying hard to keep stiffly upright. "The bullet could be stopping the blood."

"If that's what it's doing, it's making a wretched job of it. You're bleeding like a whore with a slice took out of her." Jack smiled a bit as he thought, in spite of his throbbing head and arm. "Hope you don't mind my using my off hand. Managed to break the other arm falling through that blasted chair of yours."

Todd scowled. "Gin first." His shaky hand reached for the bottle of gin, but Jack snatched it first.

"Why, of course! Gin first." Fumbling one-handed with the half-closed lid, the Ripper took a drink for himself to stave off the grinding pain from his arm, then splashed the gin cheerfully onto his rival's bleeding arm. "Keeps infections down. Probably shouldn't drink any, though, in your condition."

Sweeney was still cursing through clenched teeth as the bells over the door jangled. Jack glanced up, and saw the boy stepping through the door. The hands that gripped Fogg's bag, he noticed, dribbled blood across the already-gory leather. The Ripper wondered briefly what had happened in and above the shop after he fell. _Chip off the old motherly block, I suppose._

The lad's mother reappeared from the parlor as the door swung shut, rolls of bandages unwinding across her arm. Quickly, she ducked over to him and hugged him. "That's my boy, Toby. Here, I'll take that for you." The boy blushed a bit – Jack almost smiled to see it – as he escaped her hug, and he handed her the bag. "Thank you, love. You go wash up and take care of yourself, alright?"

Jack craned his neck as far as he could to watch her sweep over to the counter, tucking a bottle of gin under arm, before she arrived hurriedly to drop their assembled gear onto the table-top. The vibrations of the falling bag made his arm ache. "Now, I brought bandages – we always did keep them around, you know. Just in case." She tossed them onto the tabletop, and both Jack and Sweeney looked skeptically at the yellowish, stained linen strips that unrolled as they landed. "Color's a bit funny, but I don't suppose it makes any difference. And I brought some wet rags." They flopped onto the table with a damp _slap_, and Mrs. Lovett, empty-handed, moved to stand behind the barber. "You could use a bit of cleaning up yourself, dear."

Jack glanced at the rags dripping on the table, then at his own bloody hand, then at the arm that wouldn't move to pick up the cloth, and frowned as worry tugged at him in spite of himself. Right-handed, he took the rag and clumsily mopped at the ragged hole in Sweeney's skin. "I don't know if I can do this with one hand. I'll get the shot out, if I can. After that, I'll tell you what to do, sweetheart, and you do it." Dropping the rag, he reached for the pair of forceps gleaming in Fogg's medical kit, but found that he had trouble slipping his fingers into the handles. "Besides, I'm quite good at taking people apart, but I haven't had much practice at putting them back together."

Mrs. Lovett gave him a look, worried and resigned. "Just please behave yourself, Jack." The Ripper had already turned back to his tools, trying miserably to slosh a bit of gin over the tip of the forceps. He didn't notice Nellie grip his rival's hand nervously.

He grinned only slightly as he held the curved metal up to the light. "This may hurt just a bit."

Sweeney bit back a snarl as Jack went to work, trying hard not to tear away his arm. His right hand clamped hard around Mrs. Lovett's as the baker peered fretfully past him. She winced even to look. "Careful, Jack, You don't have to hurt him any more than necessary."

The Ripper paused, not looking up. His brow was furrowed with concentration, but he couldn't quite help the faint smirk that flickered across his face. "Well, I am doing this all wrong-handed, my dear." He leaned carefully forward, trying to see better. At the bottom of the hole punched in Sweeney's flesh, he could feel the forceps meeting something hard, whether bone or lead, but he couldn't quite get a grip on it. The pincers slipped again. "Curse it!"

Jack leaned carefully closer before once again reaching into the wound. His hand worked clumsily, but the forceps slipped deeper. He felt the steel tips strike the hard place. They opened, jabbing, he knew, into the bleeding tissue to either side, and he closed them as firmly as he could. He paused. "Just a tick. I think I might almost have it."

He waited, steeling himself, sensing Sweeney steeling himself. Jack gave one final tug. The angle was awkward, and his fingers felt stubbornly uncooperative, but the bullet came free, dripping red. He heard Todd and Lovett sigh together with relief. And Jack himself released a breath he hadn't noticed he'd been holding. He let bullet and forceps clatter together to the table as he felt the night catch up to him suddenly. "Come around, Eleanor. I need you to put a good, firm squeeze on his arm for me."

Looking around the shop, the faces he saw watching him made him strangely nervous. The sailor, his cheek still marked with an angry red gash, watched in horror and relief, and the lad stared, bloodied and unsure. Even Inspector Abberline, although face down in a plate of pie crust and gravy, remained. Something about it struck him, and the fiend of Whitechapel felt shaken.

"Like that, love?" Mrs. Lovett leaned between her two men, her hands pressing hard over the bullet hole in her tenant's arm.

"Just there – yes. Nice and hard." Jack ran the back of his bloody hand over his brow. "I think I…" He paused, and all the eyes in the shop fixed on him. _I think I just saved a man's life. _Worse, he realized, _Sweeney Todd's _life. The life of the man Mrs. Lovett adored. "I think that's all. We'll just see if we can slow the bleeding some before we patch him up. Just keep holding on, for now."

Jack's hand nearly shook as he finally finished. _I'm just not used to doctoring, is all. _He dragged his arm gingerly across the tabletop as he shifted his chair away, trying to give Mrs. Lovett more room. "Take the bandages and wrap him up." He leaned back, not caring to watch her wind the gauze tight around Sweeney's arm, and closed his eyes. _Quite unused to it._

"You alright, dear?"

The barber breathed slow, deep, steadying breaths. "Yes. Fine."

Nellie heaved a sigh of relief as she stood. "There now, then." Her bloodied hand fell on the Ripper's shoulder. "Right. We've got a lot of work to do, all of us. Toby, my little hero, you help yourself to a drink, if you like, but then I need you to get a mop and bucket, quick, and start on these floors. Anthony, you'll have to help me get Abberline out of here. Then we'll get Johanna settled in. You two…" She turned back to the two battered monsters who sitting beside her. "I think you'd better stay where you are, loves. And Jack-" She leaned over to eagerly kiss his gore-spattered cheek, and Jack smiled a bit, in spite of the pain and the strange sensations that troubled him. "I owe you one, dear."

Her arm snaked around him quickly, and his grin vanished as her hug tugged at his left arm. "_Ah!"_

"I'm sorry, Jack! I forgot." Gently, Mrs. Lovett touched the fabric of his sleeve, brushing back the heavier cloth of his coat that had already started to fall back into place since he had made his own rough examination in the bakehouse. And even that careful pressure set the swelling bruise beneath aching. "We'll get you sorted out. Just hang on…"

The Ripper prodded gently at his arm, thinking. It would need to be set. He didn't know if he could do it himself, even with his good hand. Even with Eleanor's help. He supposed his only other choice was to come up with some excuse for how he'd broken it and find himself a real doctor, but he didn't –

"Bandages." Jack almost jumped, looking up to see Sweeney flexing his wounded arm experimentally. "You'll need more bandages, Mrs. Lovett. And something straight and stiff to make a splint."

Mrs. Lovett cast a doubtful look between the two killers. "Right. Well, alright, Mr. T." And, quickly, she bustled away, glancing back again at their bloodied table as she passed out of sight.

The Ripper glared at Sweeney Todd, who smiled grimly back. Of all possible options, this, he knew, was the unquestionably the worst. _Curse it._

Gritting his teeth, he extended his arm reluctantly toward the barber's waiting hand. Todd smiled. Jack scowled. And the barber gripped his smarting wrist none-too-gently.

No one else was left in the shop, save the dozing Abberline.

Sweeney grinned. "This may hurt just a bit."

**XXXXXXX**

_I think the words, "Don't try this at home," fall kinda short. Please recall that seeking medical help from serial killers is generally not advised. Unless you're in a zombie apocalypse/running from the law/1984 kind of scenario, in which case all bets are off._

_Reviewing silly fanfiction, on the other hand, is not at all harmful to your health. : )_


	19. Chapter 19

**Kidney Pie - Chapter 16**

The coming dawn had begun to soften the darkness over Fleet Street before Mrs. Lovett threw down her cleaning rag and picked up the half-empty bottle of gin. And that was long after her entire body had begun to ache for a rest.

The baker sighed with relief as she dropped into an empty seat beside Sweeney Todd. "Well, now. That's a longer night than I'm used to." Jack sat across the table from her tenant. The two killers studiously ignored both her and each other, and she fully returned the favor, uncapping the bottle and taking a generous swig of the gin. "I don't exactly turn in at sundown, neither. Ain't every day I have to run from bloody herds of lunatics and all, never mind the rest of it."

She could have added that a part of the rest of it had been fussing after her two companions, but she took another drink instead. She had always known men could be peevish when they were busted up, but at least with Albert, trying to keep him from moving hadn't been an issue. Neither had keeping knives out of his hands. _Wouldn't call either one of these buggers sweet-natured to start with. _

She supposed it was enough of a miracle that she had kept them both from snapping at each other all night, never mind gotten them washed up and dressed in clean clothes. Since she had accomplished both, she supposed she had done well enough for her two fiends.

Her two sullen, bleary-eyed, aching, exhausted fiends, glaring past each other in stubborn silence. With a weary sigh, she drank again.

"I'm in for a long day, I expect, Mr. T." She continued to ignore the fact that Sweeney paid her no attention, scowling half at the tabletop and half at Jack, saying nothing. Dreadfully pale – Mrs. Lovett hadn't thought he could _get _any paler – he slumped, hurt and exhausted, over the table. The Ripper, for his own part, sat hunched over his broken arm, bandaged in a makeshift sling, his eyes narrowed with pain. "Don't suppose business'll be slow, either. World ain't that kind."

Lounging back against the creaking wooden chair, Nellie stifled a yawn. "Wish I could drink myself right into bed. Ugh! I never knew I could be so sore all at once."

The glances that darted her way were less than sympathetic. Mrs. Lovett drank again.

Finally, Sweeney stirred, turning his glower toward the baker. "Give that here."

Still slouching back against the chair, Nellie gave him a doubtful look. "I don't know, Mr. Todd. Don't want you keeling over again, now." Still holding the bottle, she looked across the table. "What's your professional opinion, Jack?"

"Let him drown in it for all I care." She had found the Ripper one of Albert's old shirts while his own was drying with the rest of their bloodied laundry, and it hung off him. _Could probably fit three of him in there._ "Only don't let him slobber all over the bottle. He's not the only one that could use a drop."

Mrs. Lovett rolled her eyes as she heaved herself out of her chair again. "I'll just get us a couple of glasses, then, shall I?" Every step bit at her aching knees, but she crossed to the counter. Even reaching for the glasses seemed like more effort than her exhausted arms felt like going to. _And I still got them two bleeders to carve up tomorrow. _Holding the three glasses between the fingers of one hand, she paused and then reached up again for a fresh bottle. "Just in case, loves. Don't know how I'll feel about getting up again if you two drink that one dry." Stiffly, she turned back to the table and lumbered on again.

Until a faint noise stopped her.

"Mum?"

In the doorway, her Toby stood, dressed in his ill-fitting pajamas, and looked at her hesitantly, for all the world like a little boy woken by nightmares. "Do you suppose I could have just a bit?"

"No!" Nellie could almost sense Mr. Todd's glare burning into her back. But she smiled.

In spite of her stiff muscles, she felt her heart softening at the look on his face. _Always did have a soft-spot for the little imp. _"Come on, then." She held out the bottle and he took it eagerly, hesitating only slightly as he approached the table and the two sulking killers that occupied it. Mrs. Lovett turned back for another glass.

A plate of pies sat beside her table, and on a whim, she grabbed those, too. She'd brought them up from the bakehouse hours earlier, thinking they'd do for a quick meal for Johanna and the lads. Too bad Sweeney had refused to let her dish them out. _Never was the practical one, was he? _They'd always been good enough for her Toby.

Her tenant's eyes met hers with a fierce stare as she returned. At the moment, though, the baker was too tired to care about his temper. In fact, she felt a little thrill of giddiness and relief. That might've been the gin going to work, she supposed. _Wish it'd work as quick on my bloody back. _But even more potent, she knew, was the mere closeness of Sweeney Todd. She'd been near him often enough, touched him even, but tonight, it awed could be as angry as he wanted. He was still here. He was alive. And he had even kissed her. _How the hell that ever slipped my bloody mind… _Even as he turned back to his silent fuming, she dropped her weary bones into the chair only just next to his.

She set the glasses down with a clank and watched, smiling, as Toby filled them neatly. _Boy does make a fine waitor._ Deftly, Toby passed the glasses around, and, in quiet unison, all four downed their drinks. Nellie winced, then reached for the bottle again. "That's the stuff to keep you going, boys." Without hesitating, she refilled their glasses.

Across the table, Jack pressed his good hand uselessly over his sling as if even the motion it took to throw back the small glass jolted his arm. _Poor thing ain't hardly glanced at them pies, either._ Mrs. Lovett massaged her own tired arms, and cast him a sympathetic look. _That'll quiet things down in Whitechapel for a while, I'll wager._ But, looking again, she didn't like the trace of mischief that crept into the Ripper's scowl. Gritting his teeth, he kicked the chair beside him out from other the table. "Here, come sit next to your old friend Jack, my lad."

Toby sat, reluctant only for a moment, and the four drank again. Nellie stretched. "No games now, love. I'm too tired for it. And you really ought to be in bed, Toby." Stifling a yawn, she rested her elbows on the tabletop. "For that matter, _I _really ought to be in bed."

"Oh, come now, Eleanor. Surely he can have a nice sit-down with us, after the fine work he did getting rid of the old goat." Jack gave Toby a smile, but glanced at Sweeney. Mrs. Lovett groaned as she poured another round. "Now, where'd you stick him, son?"]

"Jack!"

"What?" Grinning an awful, grimacing smile, the Ripper looked across the table at her. "Ain't no shame in a job well done. It's a bloody good thing he done it, too, seeing as certain other folks here just let an unarmed old man, and a judge of the law, no less, go strolling out the front door." Jack gripped his glass, throwing another sidelong look at his rival. "Quite a lucky chance things played out as they did. What with that somebody who might be sleeping with a bullet in his head if certain other somebodies were, say, trapped in a madhouse or something like that."

Beside her, Nellie saw Sweeney smoldering with rage. She wondered if he still had a razor holstered in the clean pants she'd brought him. She also wondered when her back and legs would quit aching. At any rate, she prayed the barber was hurting enough to sit and bear it for the night. _Probably the only thing stopping them from finishing each other off, at this point._ She drank, and automatically, the others followed suit. She saw Toby look away as he set down his empty cup, and the baker cast Jack a pointed look. "Toby might not want to talk about it just now, dear."

The boy looked up, as if startled by his name, and met her eyes earnestly. "No, mum. It's alright, really." A rusty smudge, either blood or dust or both, Nellie supposed, colored his pale cheek. She didn't have the energy to reach up to brush it off, but mentally added getting Toby a bath to the list of things she would have to do that day. "I've been thinking about it all night, and I'd like to talk."

Mrs. Lovett searched the pale little face across from her, and those dark eyes, just showing the traces of shadows underneath, stared back at her. It struck her, suddenly, what a sober little man her boy could be. Even with the gin. Beside them, even Jack and Sweeney seemed to soften a bit, giving up their quarrel and falling back into their silence and pain. She felt her heart swell a bit. "Anything you like, son."

Toby looked down again, his eyes and fingers resting on his glass. "Well, what I've been thinking is, it's just like I was doing my part, is all. I never thought of it before, until I seen how you handled that detective, Mrs. Lovett. Always figured it was just…" His eyes flickered up briefly at Mr. Todd. "Well, but I guess whatever you two are up to, I know you're in it together. And you, too, Jack, sir, since you saved Mr. T."

Nellie ignored the strangled noise that came from one of her two killers.

Toby looked up again, right up into her face. "And now, I suppose I am, too."

The words struck Nellie. Her little lad, and accomplice to murder and cannibalism. _Not that he hadn't been, anyway, but… _She floundered for a reply. Until Mr. Todd stirred beside her. "So you are, boy."

She and Toby both turned to the barber in surprise. It was certainly the first time she could recall that her sullen Sweeney Todd found words before she did. Nellie had traced his features with her eyes more than she would care to admit, but her practiced eye couldn't find any trace of anger in him. He looked grim and serious, as always. _Not to mention looking like death warmed over_. But he spoke almost softly.

When she turned back to her helper, he had already shifted his gaze back to her. And his makeshift mother found that she couldn't look away from those brown eyes fixed on hers. Those _innocent _eyes. Mrs. Lovett generally set little store by the idea of innocence. But it struck her quite suddenly that she had led Toby into all sorts of murder and villainy, boozed him up, set him down with madmen, and fed him on human pies. _Probably not quite the motherly attention he needed, that. _Not sure what to say, she knocked back her glass and poured another. "If it weren't for you, Toby, every one of us would be running for our lives right now."

Jack half-smiled wearily at nothing in particular. "With the lawmen snapping at out heels."

Smiling shyly, Toby lifted his gin. "So, now we're like a family? All together?"

"That we are, my darling boy." Brimming with as much joy as she had the energy to muster, Nellie picked up her own glass. "Here's to us – in it together!" Grinning, they both drank.

Across the table, over the last remaining rags and strips of bandage, the two killers glared at each other. "Rubbish," said Jack the Ripper. They both drank.

Toby set down his empty glass. "Besides, if the two of you ever take to hurting Mrs. Lovett, now I know I can always just kill you." The two glares turned curiously at him. "And thank you for the knife, Mr. Ripper."

Mrs. Lovett picked up the bottle. "More gin, then." The clear liquid gurgled softly as she poured the last of it into their four glasses. They drank. Nellie winced, and wiped her mouth the back of her weary arm. "Might want to keep a few of those insights to yourself, Toby dear."

"Sorry, mum." Toby's white face colored a bit. "But at least you don't have to pretend like it's all a secret, anymore, and I don't have to pretend like I don't know nothing."

Prying the lid off the new bottle, Nellie smiled sleepily. The gin seemed finally to be easing away the stiffness in her poor joints. Or at least easing her awareness of it. "Well, that'll be alright, I'm sure and -" She blinked, the alcohol splashing across the front of her dress as the top popped out of its place. "What do you mean, 'pretend'?"

The lad looked away again, sheepishly. "Well, I didn't think you were in on it, exactly. At least, not until you knocked out the Inspector, there." He paused, glancing up from the droplets collecting in the bottle of the cup. Nellie filled it again. _Boy's got a problem, he does._ But she took a quick drop for herself, too. "But Mr. Todd, sir, I knew you been killing the people what went upstairs." Toby spoke quietly, looking away towards the counter. "And you, too, Jack. I guessed about you, too."

Mrs. Lovett broke into a grin as she stared, and leaned back into her creaking chair. "Well, I'll be damned!" _So he didn't go in so blindly as I thought, my little lamb. _She supposed it was less than motherly of her, but she felt almost proud of the lad. "I think I've underestimated you, love."

"It wasn't really that hard, even." Cheering up, Toby looked up at her bright-eyed, just like her little boy always eager to help, and shyly helped himself to the plate of meat pies. "I kept noticing how people would go up to Mr. T's shop and never seemed to come down again." They both spared a glance at Sweeney, who still looked a little sour. And no wonder. Her eyes wandered to the clean white cloth of his shirtsleeve, just over the bandage she knew was probably still soaking up the seeping blood from his wound. _Poor Mr. T. _And to be in such a state on the night when he should finally be celebrating his revenge. "And then I got to thinking about Senor Pirelli, and where he could have gone to all of sudden. And, well, I guess I figured it out."

Nellie glanced across at Sweeney again. She suddenly wanted very much to touch him. She shouldn't, and she knew it well enough. But why couldn't she give him a bit of comfort, after everything? And hadn't he kissed her, right on the steps of Fogg's Asylum? Her heart galloping, the baker smiled and reached down to give his knee a friendly squeeze.

She felt a little giddy as she pulled her hand back quickly. That she blamed on the gin. _Really should slow down…_ A glance at her companions reinforced the idea. Although Toby fought manfully to stay awake, she could see the drink beginning to have its usual effect. Beside the lad, the stiff liquor seemed to have drained the starch out of Jack the Ripper; he seemed less to hunch, stiff and scowling, over his arm than to hang over it, looking all moody with Albert's shirt hanging off him like off a coat rack. And her own Mr. T looked the worst of the lot, listing slowly sideways in his chair as exhaustion and blood loss and the gin worked on his senses. But she reached for the bottle again. _I'll just have this last one with Toby._

Toby drank, swallowing with hardly a grimace, then paused, bit into his cold pie, and chewed reflectively. "The only thing I could never think of is what you done with the bodies."

Mrs. Lovett choked on the gin she had poured herself, bracing herself on Sweeney's shoulder as she coughed. Beside her, the barber looked at her with uncharacteristic shock written on his face. She supposed he didn't know what to say. _She _didn't know what to say. _More gin. _She reached for the bottle.

A laugh interrupted her before she could even pour. She looked up.

Across the table, Jack chuckled low and quiet. Restrained. For a moment at least, before his laughter grew louder and freer, and he rocked forward in his seat, his good arm cradling his bad one close to his chest.

Toby looked around the table in surprise and alarm, but even the startled look on his face didn't drive away Nellie's grin. A sideways glance told her that even her sullen Mr. Todd wore a slight smirk. Still smiling, she reached across the table to take Toby's hand. "That's our Jack the Ripper, duck. Ain't he a cheerful fellow?"

Jack leaned back in his chair, grinning breathlessly even as he pressed his hand ruefully over his bandaged arm. "I quite like that lad of yours, Eleanor."

"So do I, Jack." Mrs. Lovett smiled at Toby, who smiled back. With her free hand, she began refilling glasses. "We do pretty well for ourselves, we four. Don't we?"

All around the table, the gin disappeared. Mrs. Lovett lay her own glass down, and found that her aches and pains seemed much less troublesome. In fact, she felt quite pleased, to be sitting here with her own Mr. T, and Toby, and even Jack the Ripper, who amused her. And they'd done it all, that very night. All they'd wanted. And here he was, Sweeney Todd, sitting right beside her.

She knew that maybe she shouldn't, but she wanted to. Whether it was the hour or the gin, she didn't care. She wanted to. She did it; she slipped her hand, careful of his wounded arm, into Sweeney's. He was alive, and they were safe, victorious. Besides, he looked pretty well the worse for the gin himself. What did it matter if he pulled away?

But to her surprise, her tenant's hand closed around her own, squeezing her fingers between his. And Mrs. Lovett felt she would do quite alright, indeed.

XXXXXXX

Johanna lay, still and stiff, staring at the cracked plaster above her head. Being confined for most of her life to Turpin's mansion, she had never slept well in strangers' homes. Especially not in strangers' beds, wearing strangers' borrowed nightgowns. Or after being dragged from the dungeons of a madhouse and witnessing the murder of her guardian of fifteen years.

Or with young sailors crooning lullabies beside her.

"_Hush, hush, time to be sleeping._

_Hush, hush, dreams come a' creeping._

_Dreams of peace and of freedom,_

_And meeting again at the seaside…" _

The song drifted gently up from the floor beside Mrs. Lovett's bed, where Anthony, mindful of propriety as well as of her comfort, had slept.

She supposed it was very sweet of him, but wholly unnecessary. She hadn't slept much at all, between their escape from Fogg's and the frantic hours that followed. She hadn't been set to work like Anthony had, but she did, she thought, have to be told several times over where she was and how she had come to be there, and who these strangely violent people were. And after that, she had been allowed a hot bath while Mrs. Lovett poked about for a clean nightdress that might fit her.

The woman talked constantly the entire time, but Johanna was very grateful.

"_Long you stood by the ocean,_

_Wrapped in grief and devotion,_

_But now gulls raise a commotion_

_To herald your love to the sea side…"_

She didn't imagine Anthony had slept much, either. He'd been working, helping to drag the police detective out of the shop and to "mop up anything inconvenient," as Mrs. Lovett said. He'd gone with Toby, too, to investigate the wreckage of Mr. Todd's shop. Johanna was afraid he'd been put to far too much use that night. It wouldn't do to overtire him so greatly that he might do something foolish, such as fall down the stairs again.

That was quite worrying, in fact. She had only seen him from her window, but he had never seemed like a particularly clumsy person.

"…_See our white sails come winging,_

_With fair winds sighing and singing,_

_Longing hearts swiftly bringing…" _

At any rate, neither of them seemed likely to get any sleep now. The sheets rustled as she peeked her hands out over the top of the quilt. "Anthony?"

"_No more waiting and -" _He paused. Johanna pictured him blinking up into the dark. "Johanna?"

"It's alright; you can stop singing."

"Oh." He was silent, and Johanna turned her head, looking at the edge of the mattress above where he lay. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry." A clock ticked softly on a cluttered bedside table. She glanced at it. _6:54._ "It's nearly seven o' clock, anyway."

Blankets rustled, and Anthony's head appeared as he sat up, his face obscured by bruise and bandages and his long, disheveled hair. He still wore the clothes he had on yesterday. Johanna, less fortunate, had been forced to borrow an outfit. Mrs. Lovett had taken her filthy and bloodied dress to wash, giving her instead a very old dress she had found in the Tonsorial Parlor above. Faded and creased, it smelled as musty as if it had been shoved in a dusty drawer for as long as Johanna had been alive.

It struck her as odd that the barber would have women's clothes lying about, since he didn't seem to be married. But perhaps he had been at some time, since he was, apparently, her father.

Johanna used to daydream that one day she would be reunited with her parents. She knew he had been a barber, and she always pictured him well-groomed, like a butler, with elaborate moustache and whiskers. (What would a barber do, after all, but take pride in his whiskers?) And always he would take her hands, and kneeling down (she had been very small when she had pictured this) would say, "Johanna, my sweetheart, I'm your father, and I've finally found you. Won't you come home with me?"

In fairness, she supposed Mr. Todd may intend to say something like that, still. She hadn't been entirely meant to overhear. Mrs. Lovett, who seemed to be always saying something, had been talking about what to feed the small army that had come to occupy her house. Johanna, resting in the parlor, hadn't been following the conversation. But she did hear the ragged voice of Sweeney Todd growling, "You are _not_ feeding _those pies_ to my _daughter!"_

"Anthony, would you please turn away while I dress?"

The young man looked up at her, blushing, then, quickly, he scrambled to his feet and dashed to the chair in front of Mrs. Lovett's vanity. In the mirror, she saw him cover his face with his hands like a child playing hide and seek.

Johanna still felt awkward as she rose gingerly from the bed. She was wearing her host's most modest nightgown, according to the baker, but it still felt a little less than virtuous, by the stiff standards she had been raised with. She looked back again at Anthony as she touched the buttons. His reflection showed his hands still clasped earnestly over his eyes. Hastily, she changed out of the nightgown and into the stale-smelling dress.

She looked down at herself, still blushing at changing with a man in the room, before looking back again at Anthony, who was still hiding his eyes. The whole situation was rather uncomfortable. Even in the safety and quiet of the morning, her thoughts seemed chained to the horrors just behind her, though she tried hard to focus on the odd little pie shop and put the madhouse out of mind.

Fogg's Asylum just did not bear thinking on.

Rather, she couldn't bear to think of it. Looking around her again, Johanna felt strangely out of place in a room with no bars and no rats and no screams. She felt strangely as if such a place could not actually be what it seemed. Or she could not really be in it. But she was. Her fingers brushed the fabric of the unfamiliar dress, touched something new, something not of Fogg's.

But even now, what was this place? How precisely her innocent young sailor had brought her into the hands of murderers who inhabited a pie shop, she couldn't guess. She had been frightened by police. She had seen her guardian of fifteen years all but murdered before her eyes. She had found her father in the strange creature named Sweeney Todd. And she had been offered no explanation for any of it. Her mind had no place to even begin to decipher it.

And, Johanna hated how snobbish it sounded even in her own mind, but 186 Fleet Street was far from what she was used to. The dirty windows. The worn and battered and faded look of everything in the house. The fact that the cheerful wallpaper in the sitting room was singed in places. Everything about the place seemed foreign, as if she had travelled not only from one side of London to another, but to another nation, inhabited by the lean and the ragged and the unmistakably poor. Also, a distinct and unpleasant smell lingered about the shop.

But then, they had _fed _her. Hot, steaming soup with left-over rolls had been heaven after her daily porridge, stale bread and boiled potatoes in Fogg's Asylum. And they'd given her tea, and drawn a hot bath for her, and provided her with clean (if musty) clothes. And Miss Barker was not apt to be ungrateful to anyone who opened their home to her.

Especially if they'd also killed the Honorable Judge Turpin. _The dog!_

She glanced back at Anthony. "You may look now."

Immediately, his hands sprang from his face and he stood, turning to face her. He blushed slightly. Johanna could feel the heat still on her own cheeks. She seemed always to be blushing around him. Perhaps because he stared at her so constantly. It hadn't seemed so odd when he had watched her from beneath her window, but it somehow became more awkward while they sat in the same room.

She sat carefully on the edge of the bed. Across the room, Anthony fumbled, scarcely looking away, to turn around Mrs. Lovett's chair, and sat facing her. That wistful, uncertain expression, never seemed to change.

The clock ticked quietly in the dim light. Over the clutter, and the teetering piles of possessions that had been moved to make way for Anthony, Johanna watched the sailor watching her. She blinked, then glanced anxiously at the clock. _7:09._

It really was unsettling, the staring. Trying hard to look as if she wasn't looking away, Johanna scanned the room for something else, anything to get those eyes off her. Her glance fell on the dishes from their midnight supper.

Blushing a little guiltily, she looked back at her suitor. "Perhaps you could see whether Mrs. Lovett has prepared anything for breakfast?"

Anthony jumped, but remained staring, dumbstruck, as if startled.

Miss Barker swallowed, dry-mouthed. "Only if it isn't a trouble to you."

Staring another moment, the sailor blinked at her, then sprang to his feet and ran for the door – a little too quickly. His feet caught in the blankets he had been lying in. Johanna winced as he fell, his arms flailing into a nightstand shoved aside for his bed. That too came crashing down.

Johanna gasped.

Then laughed, as she beheld her suitor sprawled on the floor, looking thoroughly befuddled and embarrassed. Their hostess' yarn, and a half-knitted scarf, hung haphazardly over his head, the red strands draping over his disheveled hair and bandage. The two blunt needles stuck up from his hair like some strange headdress and a dog-eared copy of some old Penny Dreadful slid down his chest, so that the highwayman on the cover seemed to ride his galloping horse at a slow, backwards crawl toward the sailor's lap.

Perhaps he _was_ the sort of person who fell down stairs.

But when he looked up at her as if her laughter lit up the whole dark world around them, Johanna couldn't help but think that maybe the two of them would be alright.

XXXXXXX

_Thank you all for reading, and for your mighty patience in waiting for an update. I have been dragging my feet because I couldn't decide on an ending... I think I have it now. Though, I do have one more chapter left to waffle my way through..._

_Anthony's song is a partial rewrite of the Scottish lullaby, "Hush, Hush," sung very nicely by the Corries. Props to my friend Star the Ripper of deviantart who suggested the tune to me._

_And thanks in advance to all who click on that lovely little review button. (You know you want to!)_


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